That no fatalities bit is the crucial part. And for quality of life the amount of noise is just much better for bikes, which if you live somewhere with roads and bicycle lanes, you'd love for all the cars to go away and just have bicycles. You just need separates infrastructure, as a pedestrian you should almost never have to share a space with bicycles (or cars for that matter). And if you are on a shared space any sane design will make all cars and bicycles wait and slow down. And at that point they can't be annoying cause you don't have to go out of the way for them ever, they can wait (and seethe I suppose).

> as a pedestrian you should almost never have to share a space with bicycles

These collisions are mostly at intersections, which aren't avoidable on a flat surface you would need to go 3D.

I'm in favor of raised sidewalks for pedestrians, but they are relatively pricey infrastructure.

Edit: > That no fatalities bit is the crucial part.

Globally I think the rates are quite a bit lower. But in the US it's closer than it might seem based on how many more drivers there are than cyclists. Cyclist only kill about 4 pedestrians per year in the US, but cyclists are also vastly less common especially on a per mile basis. https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/pedestrians-kill...

To be clear I don't this says as much about bikes as it does the biased population of people currently using them.

If we are comparing against cars though this is a no brainer. Cars and trucks are extremely hard on infrastructure while people and bikes are basically free. Go 3D!

Cars (drivers, really) are very, very dangerous. They are the leading cause of dead children. They are also one of the reasons kids don't play in the street. I find that far less annoying than cyclists.

Drivers are a lot more common than cyclists in the US.

So yes cars kill ~7,000 pedestrians per year vs ~4 (2013-2020) for bikes, but normalize the numbers and bikes are also very dangerous in the US especially on a per mile basis. https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/pedestrians-kill...

https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-i...

Seems like much of the danger of cycling is due to being near cars though, while the reverse isn't true. Better infrastructure and less car subsidy is likely to make cycling a lot safer, whereas cars already have ~all the infrastructure and subsidy and are still enormously dangerous

The danger for cyclists is drivers, the danger for pedestrians is both.

your first link is for the UK, I think? That seems like a separate issue in a place with very different urban design and habits.

What's remarkable is that cars kill thousands of pedestrians _even after we've greatly reduced the frequency of walking_. If the pool were full of sharks then deaths by shark would quickly fall to 0 of course since nobody would swim anymore!

Ops, can’t find national numbers for the US. NYC alone had at least 7 pedestrians killed by cyclists from 2011-2019 plus several more recent deaths not counted by this article. That works out to ~10x safer per cyclist and fairly close mile. (As a side note NYC cabs are driving 100k miles per year!)

https://nypost.com/2019/08/31/nyc-bicyclists-are-killing-ped...

Way less noise though

I don't think London has made quite the strides in bikeability that Paris has since 2020, but when I visited Hackney last year I was astonished to see more bikes during rush hour than cars. Walking down a road to a coffee shop, I actually had to wait a few seconds to cross at the intersection between two bike highways.

Hundreds of people riding bikes to work. And as quiet as the wilderness behind my house in the rural USA. I could hear the wind in the trees, and that was it. Maybe a little drivetrain noise from a poorly maintained bike here or there.

I desperately want to live in a city that quiet. Back when I lived in NYC practically every environment was an assault on the ears.

A treat for you: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=289 :)

And way less particulate pollution. Automobile drivers are actively hurting you everytime you breathe their exhaust fumes, tire wear dust, or brake pad dust. Of course the same can be said for bicycle tires or brakes on a far smaller scale, or probably even pedestrian plastic shoe soles.

Sure, that's fair.

Seconding this. American cyclists are extremely rude to pedestrians. Whenever somebody brings this up, cyclists dismiss it by pointing out that cars kill more pedestrians than bikes. Well that's certainly true, but I've never had cars yell at me for walking on the sidewalk or over a crosswalk, while cyclists have hurled abuse and (deliberate) near misses at me more times than I can count.

And a driver assaulted me with his car last week (I was on a bike in a "sharrow" lane). Almost put me into the ditch, and when I didn't fall, he proceeded to brake-check me.

I've had food thrown at me by motorists when I'm in dedicated bike lanes.

I've been buzzed by trucks and buses while in bike lanes.

I see cars regularly use the bike lane outside my house to make aggressive passes of slower auto traffic.

Pedestrians have been killed crossing the streets near my house. All by cars, not bicycles.

Cars regularly kill animals. And not just squirrels, but raptors and fox and other predators we don't want to lose.

And on and on. We all have our anecdotes. The answer is dedicated infrastructure for a range of transportation.

> but I've never had cars yell at me for walking ... over a crosswalk

You don't live in Boston, I see.

True, I don't. I recognize that driver and pedestrian culture are very different indifferent cities. However a significant number of cyclists seem to hate pedestrians everywhere I've gone.

To the other responder, I agree that cars are frequently assholes to cyclists, but how is that relevant to cyclists abusing pedestrians?

You have. They're just cussing you out in their cars, where you can't hear them.

Laughable opinion as a fellow American and New Yorker. A bike crash is an unfortunate, and potentially scary event. A car crash is often life threatening or fatal. You're just not weighing the cost of each type of incident properly

Your personal observation does not match statistics. Most statistics show that in the majority of bike car crashes the driver has been at fault. The second link which is for Berlin where cyclist have a very bad reputation it's 77% the drivers fault, in contrast for car pedestrian accidents it was 50/50.

I also find these complaints interesting, considering that it's generally considered the norm to drive about 10% above the speed limit, and especially pedestrians are happy to cross traffic lights at red all the time.

https://www.quadlockcase.com.au/blogs/news/8-key-facts-about...

https://www.udv.de/resource/blob/79324/c290c92fc2f0712187c0d... (sorry German)