My wife and I recently returned from a ten-week trip to France, starting in Paris and returning from Nice. (Yes, we did get caught up in the recent British Airways debacle resulting in an unplanned night at an airport hotel at Heathrow and a return flight to a different city the next afternoon.)
It has been over twenty years since we were last in Paris. One thing we noticed was the proliferation of dedicated bicycle lanes and a lot of people using bikes, electric bikes and electric scooters in their everyday lives. The reduction of car traffic is a good thing, but we found that these popular forms of alternative transportation can present a new and unexpected danger to pedestrians who are used to only watching out for cars and motorcycles on the street. Many bike riders ignore lights and crosswalks and zoom by in front of or behind pedestrians. It seems as though the electric bike riders take pride in going faster than others, especially going uphill where others slow down. Probably the worst offenders are the electric scooters that routinely switch from bike lanes to the street and to the sidewalks as they wish. Two people on one scooter taking a selfie or carrying bags as they weave down the street is a common sight. After a few close calls in Paris, we learned to assume that anytime, and in anyplace you should watch for scooters and bikes, especially from behind. This includes looking both ways when crossing a one-way street. During the rest of our trip we found similar conditions in other cities. You are not safe from collisions just because you are on a sidewalk or in a pedestrian only zone.
For those of you thinking this is unwarranted exaggeration, we can offer an example. Our apartment in Nice was right across the street from the Promenade des Anglais, a heavily used pedestrian area with a bike lane next to the street and adjacent to the pedestrian area. While coming out of the apartment building to get luggage out of our car, an accident happened across the street. We found out later that a 40-year-old man on an electric scooter had hit a five-year-old child. The child, who came from Ukraine, died the next morning.