Advocacy is hard. More often than not, we end up selling bicycling to other cyclists, rather than getting the word out to the people outside the community. It is always a question of how to you cross the gap to the people outside the community. Sometimes we do need to address the community too though.

Last week, I spent the week in Salt Lake City Utah. It was an interesting work week. The city itself has an amazing amount of bike infrastructure in downtown. Bike lanes everywhere, green lanes, signage, racks and facilities on the light rail and buses to enable bike transport. It was amazing to see, and yet… Fully half of the cyclists I saw in the city were riding on the sidewalk. Sitting at a red light next to one, I finally asked why. The response was ‘it is safer’.

This boggles the mind, and has been fairly well documented that it really isn’t safer to be on the sidewalk, but perception, even in the cycling community persists. If we haven’t reached them, how can we reach and teach drivers? Can we?