I live in the country where riding sidewalk is oficcially illegal but in practice all policemen consider it's safer and nobody catch sidewalk cyclists like violators. We have no bike lanes and bike paths. The most of cyclists are afraid of cars and prefer ride sidewalk than perish or wind up to a hotel with injuries. Megapolice roads with complicated motion organization and high speed junctions require special faculty and skills from us. One must ride very fast to be safe on our roads. We often ride sidewalks of whole crowd.
I relate myself to that smaller category who prefer to share roads with cars. Only on the road I can ride as fast as I want and not to jump by curbs. But I can ride sidewalk to overtake very dense traffic jam or if I move by park in slow walking pace. it's better to move slowly and make way for everyone. But some awkward cyclists contrive to hit pedestrians.