Phillip Uzduwinis, the former director of the Highlands University Foundation, gave me quite a scare without meaning to.

A few years ago when my office was near his, by Kennedy Hall, I’d wave as I zipped by on my bicycle, on the sidewalk, heading west where the one-way sign points east. I’d take this route as a shortcut to the Wilson Complex, four or five blocks away.

After not having seen me riding by for several months, Uzduwinis asked if I still rode the bike, and if so, why hadn’t he seen me lately? I explained I’d moved to a new office on a different part of campus. He said he’d thought I’d stopped riding altogether.

And why? “Well, because the last time I saw you crossing on National and 11th, you almost got clobbered.”

Who, me? If I had been about to meet my Maker, I certainly hadn’t realized it. Uzduwinis explained that as I crossed National, some driver, who obviously hadn’t seen me, came within inches of making me sorry.

For as long as I’ve ridden a bike, I’ve heard that people in Vegas drive like idiots, and bicyclists must do their best to avoid injury. Remember, a car has a lot more horses than a bike. And a distracted driver, gabbing or texting, can be a menace.

Why can’t Las Vegas be a biker-friendly community, with well-marked bike lanes and a community-wide effort to save a few bucks by not having to feed our SUVs and Hummers at four dollars a gallon?

But any discussion of the turf fight between bicyclists and motorists invariably brings out the heavy artillery. Drivers write letters to the editor detailing the infractions bikers commit, such as riding on sidewalks or not obeying stop signs or traffic lights.

Is there any compromise? I confessed to two infractions at the outset: riding on the sidewalk and going against traffic. I’m guilty but I’m alive.

Let me explain:

A pedestrian, walking some 3 mph is urged to walk on the left side, against the traffic, thereby knowing what is coming toward them, as opposed to hoping not to get hit from behind. A biker, going not a whole lot faster, would be far safer riding against the traffic and not having to crane his neck constantly to check car traffic behind him.

It’s true that bicyclists often fail to obey stop signs or traffic lights. But what’s the harm? No biker is willingly going to try to race a car to the intersection. The motorists’ concern, invariably is based simply on the fact that drivers need to stop, so why shouldn’t bikers have to follow the same rules?

I wanted to applaud a small group of bikers as they took the sidewalk on Mills Bridge. Most were traveling east, and rather than increase their chances of getting hit where there’s a berm that spans the bridge, they took the sidewalk. And why not? No pedestrian was anywhere near the bridge at the time.

In virtually all communities, riding a bike on the sidewalk is illegal. And why is that? It’s doubtless the effect of an archaic law passed in the days when people actually walked on sidewalks. Look around. Were do you see masses of pedestrians on sidewalks except for parades?

The advantages of allowing bicycles on sidewalks would increase safety. A bicycle can go anywhere a wheelchair can go, and wheelchairs, even the motorized kinds, don’t seem to bring many complaints from people on foot.

It is true that a person on a bike could severely injure a pedestrian, but is that kind of impact in any way comparable to the damage a car-on-bicycle crash causes? Only recently, two local bikers were injured in collisions with cars. One wonders whether the bicyclists would have been safer had they been riding on the sidewalk instead.

During my childhood, many in Las Vegas used their bikes as primary transportation. And in those days, police warned all of us to ride on the street, with the traffic. That may have been a suitable fiat at the time, given that there were many more people on foot and fewer cars than today.

Even for a town with a college, there really are few regular bicycle riders, my childhood neighbor David Vigil being one of them. Will there ever be more bikers than now? Perhaps.

It’s great, though, having people thinking green and saving money by riding their bikes to work. And if we had more sensible laws in regard to bicycle traffic, maybe we’d see more such riders.

By the way, the near-accident that my friend Phillip Uzduwinis told me about happened not as I was going against traffic — but with it. Too bad bicyclists weren’t born with an extra set of eyes in the back.