prathmann:
Gosh! I hope you're right.
But, I’m not so sure you are.

Exposure:
One of the cornerstones of accident research is "Exposure". Time is one of the elements of assessing exposure; for a given travel distance, a pedestrian has a time exposure that is three to four times greater than a cyclists. Does that matter, probably but I am not qualified to make that call.

Location:
Another element of a collective judgment about a particular exposure is location. By comparison, urban pedestrians spend more of their time on relatively secure sidewalks and are only exposed to vehicles when they cross a street. Cyclists, on the other hand, are constantly exposed to vehicles. Cyclists must depend upon being seen together with the attentiveness and good intentions of car drivers. Cyclists do not have the physical protection of curbs, lamp posts, signs or parked cars.

I have never been accosted by a road rager on a sidewalk but have been several times while cycling. I’ve never been yelled at for walking alongside a road or on a sidewalk; I have been yelled at for cycling on a road. With the exception of stopping a liquor store robbery and a couple of attacking dogs, I’ve never needed to use pepper spray on a fellow pedestrian. I’ve had to do so twice with road ragers attacking me for no other reason than I was riding my bike on the road and appeared to be an easy target for their insanity.

Joe