[tropo]

Someday you will be old, unable to accelerate like a car and keep up with traffic, and you will instead wish that you could ride on the sidewalk. Part of the reason why bicycle use is unusual is that very few people can ride well enough to be out in the road.

[anonymou2]

How old do you think I am? What do you mean by keeping up with traffic? when I go uphill I do not ride as fast as cars by all means, that doesn't mean I can not use the road. If a faster driver comes behind me he either: 1. slows down and waits, 2. passes if it is safe to do it. The good thing about the road system is that it allows for vehicles of all types and speeds. Can't you drive your car in a road where there are ferraries and big trucks? Learning to ride well is easy, it doesn't requiere superhuman skills. Building separate infraestructure does not help to learn to ride, quite the opposite it encourages people to think that bicycle drivers are inferior and incapable of learning, it creates the Cyclist ghetto.

[tropo]

I assumed that you are nearly fit for the Olympics, probably around age 30, because riding slower than traffic would be extremely rude. Most of us are not so athletic, and we don't wish to be extremely rude.

It's like taking a Ford Model T down the left lane of an interstate highway with an 80 MPH speed limit, or like taking a horse-drawn carriage on a US highway, or like flying a WWI biplane into Chicago O'Hare airport. Sure, it is still legal to do so, but it is a terrible idea. People will rightly hate you if you do this.

If sidewalks aren't legal for bicycles, then most of us have no business using bicycles. Because of this, most people in the USA do not use bicycles, and the situation won't be changing for as long as the law prevents sidewalk usage.