I have mobility issues, and the chances of me dying on the road are amazingly larger than that of a pedestrian dying from me on my bike, no matter how reckless I could possibly be riding. If I have the choice between becoming roadkill or getting harassed by police, I will always choose the latter. It should be the job of the rider to yield to pedestrians the way cars must yield. If a rider isn't paying attention or going too fast for the situation, they are going to get hurt regardless of there being a pedestrian or any other obstacle. There is no danger to the motorist's safety when they mow down a cyclist. Source: I got mowed down by a police officer who buried his head in his laptop and slammed on the gas at the same time, veering uncontrollably. Luckily he wasn't injured. He had no clue he hit me until my bike was completely under his car. Somehow I managed to stay on his bumper and not go under.
This type of thinking, "One person might be frightened, so let's continue to make cyclists pay with their lives" is unfathomable. It's even more incomprehensible that it seems to come mostly from motorists wanting to dictate how all pedestrians 'shall obey' because the are second class citizens. "One could argue" all kinds of things without data and get nonsensical laws passed that affect other people and not themselves.
Furthermore, sidewalks already exist in vastly larger coverage of most cities, where bike lanes do not. Most places don't want to pay for bike lanes, and those that do rarely maintain them in the US. They have never run a street sweeper over the bike lanes where I live, and if they had, they would have hit the concrete spill that's been there for over 3 years and likely damage the street sweeper. It's outrageously dangerous if you don't know it is there because it is between the roadway and a turning lane, so if you get ejected in either direction you are possibly roadkill either way.