On 2018-08-20, Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein wrote:
In uk.politics.misc Incubus wrote:
On 2018-08-17, Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein wrote:
In uk.politics.misc Incubus wrote:
On 2018-08-16, TMS320 wrote:

A footpath (not footway) is not reserved for the use of the pedestrian
alone. Though I happen to agree with the sentiment because when I am
not near motor vehicles I want to wander with my head in the clouds
yet I don't have any scary tales of nearly being injured by cyclists.
So I wonder what the difference is between us.

Perhaps you have never lived nor worked in places like Weybridge where
feral cyclists are numerous.

Your lexical choices are revealing. I've never heard a driver described
as 'feral'. One calls them 'dangerous' or 'careless'. But 'feral'?

'Of an animal: Wild, untamed. Of a plant, also (rarely), of
ground: Uncultivated...' (_The OED_, retrieved 17 August 2018)

This really does demonstrate the low regard in which cyclists are held
by the general population [1], and the belief that they are 'out of
control'. Lawless, maybe.

Candour compels me to admit that I deliberately chose that word safe in
the knowledge that it would get a rise out of someone.

Uh-huh.

However, it is a reasonable choice of word to describe people who have
shouted at me because they expected me to move out of their way while
they were riding on the footpath.

It's no wonder that there is such clamour on the part of the mentally
disadvantaged to have cyclists 'registered' and to 'make' them pay
'insurance'. Another kettle of fish, of course.

I would settle for them staying off the pavement, in which case I won't
feel the need to elbow them off their machines into the path of an
oncoming Audi.

What do you do about the car drivers who - as we have seen - are far more
numerous on the footway than are cyclists? Do you 'elbow them' out of the
way, too?

That doesn't happen where I live. I imagine I would film them and rely on the
numberplate to identify them...