Updated August 6, 2023
Yes. By most measures, we'd say it's dangerous.
The short answer is: Las Vegas is built for automobiles.
The Strip is crowded with cars, trucks, tour and Deuce buses, stretch limos, billboards on wheels, harried cabbies, motorcycles, and motorcycle police. Plenty of drivers are rubbernecking, snapping photos and text messaging on cell phones, and tipsy on free booze.
Not only is there no room for bike lanes, there aren’t even any shoulders or "sharrows" (shared lanes with arrows), which makes it tough when a car breaks down on the Boulevard.
However, it's tempting to ride on the Strip and some people do. A handful of Strip employees commute to work by bike. If you know your way around the back streets and parking lots, you have a better chance of remaining safe while getting to and from where you're going with some alacrity. (Still, parking lots have their own dangers for cyclists and automobiles.)
Also, the road is flat as a mackerel and cyclists can, especially when traffic is stalled or backed up, still maintain cruising speeds. Even when it's not, with all the traffic lights, drivers can’t get going much faster than a cyclist can, so drivers tend to merge with cyclists who keep up with traffic. Indeed, police patrol the Strip on bicycles safely (though drivers tend to pay attention to cops more than civilians, no matter what kind of wheels they’re riding); if the police can do it safely, the reasoning goes, so can locals and visitors.
That said, expert cyclists of our acquaintance strongly recommend against riding on the Strip in heavy city traffic. Some admit that you can ride relatively safely at first light, before the Strip gets congested. But you still take your life in your hands. At around 6:30 a.m. in March 2009, a 32-year-old Las Vegas woman hit and killed a 55-year-old cyclist on the Strip around Russell Road; she was drunk at the time and fled the scene, but was quickly arrested. And in August 2015, a cyclist was rammed from behind by a car at Las Vegas Boulevard South and Spring Mountain Road, an accident that closed the southbound Strip for five hours.
If you do ride on the Strip, here’s the rest of what you need to know.
Riding on sidewalks is against the law. Helmets are mandatory. Cyclists are advised to wear bright reflective strips or patches on backs, arms and legs. And carrying water is a must any time of year; it’s so dry year-round that dehydration can set in quickly.