Badge Kids › Road Badge › Section 6 › Lesson 6.2

Ages 11-16 · Road Badge · Section 6

Why the sidewalk measures out as the dangerous one

Say what the research found about sidewalk riding compared with road riding, and name what makes a driveway on a sidewalk different from a junction on a road.

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Step 1 of 11

1Watch

The driveway

Film

The driveway

A rider comes along a sidewalk past a hedge; a car is nosing out of a driveway ahead with the driver's head turned towards the road and away from the sidewalk; the frame freezes with the bonnet across the concrete and the rider three metres short of it.

18 seconds

Nobody in that shot is being careless. The driver is looking at exactly the place they were taught to look, and it is not the place the rider is coming from.

2The idea

Everybody's instinct, including most parents'

The sidewalk feels like the safe one, and the reasoning is obvious: that is where the cars are not. Almost every adult who has ever worried about you on a road has suggested it, and none of them are being silly.

The measurements run the other way, and they have run the other way in every study anybody has done. This is the single hardest thing in this course to believe, so the rest of this lesson is the actual numbers and where they came from, rather than us telling you.

3The idea

The 1994 study, and the number that is about you

A study published in a traffic engineering journal in 1994 looked at eighty-nine bicycle and motor vehicle collisions at junctions in one Californian city and counted 2,976 riders to work out the exposure. It found that the average rider incurred a risk on the sidewalk 1.8 times as great as on the roadway.

Then it separated out direction of travel and found something larger. Riders travelling against the direction of traffic were at on average 3.6 times the risk of those travelling with it — and as high as 6.6 times for those seventeen and under. That last band is the exact age band this course is written for.

4The idea

Why the sidewalk produces that, mechanically

The same paper names the link: sidewalk riding appears to increase the incidence of wrong-way travel. A sidewalk has no direction. You use whichever side you started on, and half the time that is against the traffic on the road beside you.

And then there is the driveway. A driver pulling out looks up the road, for something moving at road speed, at the place a road-user would appear from. You arrive from behind a hedge or a parked car, on a strip they are not searching, moving several times faster than the walking pace that strip is designed around.

5Look

Where the driver is actually looking

An overhead drawing of a car nosing out of a driveway with a shaded cone showing where the driver is looking, pointed up the roadway, and the sidewalk crossing in front of the bonnet left completely outside the cone. — The driver's search

That cone is not carelessness, it is training. Everything a driver was taught about pulling out of a drive points them at the road, and the concrete in front of their bumper is checked for people at walking pace.

6Decide

The road ahead looks busier than you expected and there are three blocks left.

Yes, and walking is a genuine answer rather than a cop-out. Pushing it is the one option that takes you out of both problems at once: you are not in traffic, and you are moving at the speed the concrete and the driveways were designed around. Three blocks is about four minutes.

Both of those are the instinct, and the third one is the worst of the set. Riding against traffic is the behaviour with the biggest measured multiplier in the whole literature, and it is largest for riders your age. Being able to see the cars coming does not help, because the ones that hit you come out of driveways and side roads and never see you at all.

Pick one to carry on.

7The idea

The falls, which nobody expects

A Toronto study followed commuting riders and worked out event rates per hundred thousand kilometres on each surface. Collisions: 8.2 on roads, 16.7 on sidewalks. Injuries: 10.9 on roads, 70.5 on sidewalks. And falls, which is the column nobody predicts: 11.4 on roads, 103.4 on sidewalks. The authors note that the result seems contrary to perceived notions of safety.

Almost none of that falls column is about cars. It is driveway lips, kerb edges, sign posts, joints in the concrete, wheelie bins, and somebody stepping out of a doorway a metre in front of you. A sidewalk is a surface built for feet, and a machine this heavy meets all of it at speed.

8Find them

Which of these are things the research actually found?

Tap the ones that count.

Find all 4.

9The idea

And the reason the official numbers hide it

In one of those studies, of fifty-two sidewalk events, not one was reported to police — and some of them caused major injuries. Nobody calls anybody when a rider goes down on a kerb lip, so none of it reaches a crash statistic.

So any argument built on official crash counts understates this by a long way. None of which means you are wrong for using a sidewalk, and in some places at some ages it is exactly what your rule says to do — where you live it is set by your town, not your state. It means: if you use one, ride it as a different thing. Walking pace near driveways, treat every driveway as a junction, and never against the direction of the traffic beside you.

10Say it

The line for a friend who is going up onto the pavement

Say it out loud, in your normal voice

“I'll take the road. I'll see you there.”

It says what you are doing and nothing about what they are doing, so there is nothing in it to argue with. You are not running a campaign at the kerbside, you are just going a different way for four minutes.

11Do it

Before you leave this page

With an adult, stand at a driveway on a route you actually use and watch three cars come out of drives. For each one, say out loud where the driver's head was pointing, and at what moment they first looked at the sidewalk. Then say how far up the sidewalk you would have been by then.

Tick it when you have done it.

Lesson done.

The surface that feels safest measures out worse, and it measures worse hardest for riders your age. If you use it, ride it like a different thing.

Next lesson: The rule changes at a line you cannot see

Section 6 · Where You Are Allowed

6.1Four surfaces, and none of them have one answer 6.2Why the sidewalk measures out as the dangerous one 6.3The rule changes at a line you cannot see 6.4Lights, and the half of it everybody has backwards 6.5How to find your own rule, which is a skill ★Section check

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