Jeff Mowatt wrote:

Thanks all for those thoughts. I'm pleased to learn that there's a concensus
that the pavement should be a place for walking and one shouldn't need to be
looking over one's shoulder all the time for cyclist appearing from nowhere.

This consensus is unfortunately not shared by many traffic engineers,
who tend to think
(1) that pedestrians and cyclists are second-class citizens who have to
be kept out of the way of cars
(2) that pedestrians are too stupid to keep out of the way of cars
unless fenced in
(3) that no normal person is willing to share a road with fast or heavy
traffic on a bike.

They then engineer the road to maximise the difficulty of motor vehicles
overtaking any cyclist that does have the temerity to use the road -
thus ensuring that cyclists are frightened off.

If they have money for cycling, they will try to spend it on converting
pavements to shared use, regardless of the type of road. I am in the
process of trying to prevent a developer making the pavements shared-use
alongside roads that are being implemented as a 'home zone' - which
supposedly prioritises people over motor vehicles.

I am ONLY in favour of shared use pavements for contraflow travel along
a dual carriageway to get to the nearest crossing point.

I also believe cycling should generally be allowed on footpaths that
don't parallel roads. The idea of park rangers having the power to fine
inconsiderate or dangerous cyclists on the spot is also a good one.

From his hysterical statements, the young man in my example quite obviously
believed he was standing up for a cause, the freedom to engage in healthy
exercise unipeded by the nuisance of pedestrians. To be fair there are many
pavement cyclists who defer to those who might not be aware of their
presence, but there's a growing trend for quite the opposite, a kind of
street fascism which is not that far removed from his expression of
individual freedom and we don't even have the sound of jackboots to alert
us.

There is an urgent need for good on-road cycle training. Proper
assertive cycling can cope with almost any road conditions safely,
albeit sometimes at the cost of annoying drivers on roads that have been
engineered without any thought of cyclists. Very few drivers
deliberately endanger cyclists; you have to learn to control them so
that they don't do so inadvertently. I'd almost go so far as to say that
if you are frightened off any road, you need more cycle training - but I
might make an exception for narrow, twisty roads with 50 or 60 mph
limits.

Colin McKenzie