News is news because it is a rare or uncommon event. I'd be very wary of extrapolating "there are news articles about this event" to "it happens all the time".

I would much prefer a link that provided me actual data in order to believe that this is an event that occurs all the time (such as the number deaths of pedestrians on sidewalks per capita).

For example, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration put out a 2008 report (I chose 2008 as it was the top result on Google) listing the average pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 people by state [1]. It seems to range from ~1 to ~3.

According to the CDC, there are 799.5 deaths per 100,000 population in the United States (2010 data) [2]. This means my chance of dying as a pedestrian, compared to other potential means of me dying are around 0.3%.

A few studies have found that between 80% and 90% of pedestrian fatalities are a result of the pedestrian being at fault (this comes from the Center for Problem Oriented Policing [3], which cites two sources for this information [4] [5]). This means, again as a percentage chance of all other forms of death, dying while standing on the sidewalk is somewhere in the ballpark of 0.06%.

[1] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810968.PDF (page 18, figure 2-4).

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

[3] http://www.popcenter.org/problems/pedestrian_injuries/

[4] Lee and Abdel-Aty (2005)

[5] Teanby, Gorman, and Boot (1993)

I'm a bit hesitant to extrapolate a danger from anecdata. I might try finding actual data tonight. From experience so far I'd guess I'm much more likely to die when exercising my right of way as a cyclist.