This is turning out to be a them and us hate fest,
I was a cyclist until a car drove over me. I had not jumped any lights or rode over the pavement. I was wearing my high visibility jacket and three ‘cat eye’ halogen lights on the front and two flashing lights on the back. In my day-glow tights and bright yellow rucksack cover, I would be impossible to miss, if you were bothering to look for something other than a lorry or bus. The woman who drove over me claimed that she “didn’t see me” until she was parked on top of me. Until that point, I did something like 80 miles a week on my bike, and have lost count of the number of times that the car drivers have cut me up, knocked into me or generally treated me (as a cyclist) as unworthy of sharing the roads.
Some if not most car drivers reap what they sow, they cause the hatred on the roads by thinking themselves more worthy, they make it a dog eat dog fight to the lights, by driving in cycle lanes, by pushing cyclist on to the pavement, by blocking cycle spaces at the lights, by being idiots who think that the phrase “tear down the dotted line” on their licence gives them the right to force anything smaller than themselves off the road. Buses pick on vans, vans pick on 4x4, who in turn pick on everyone who is not a 4x4, big cars pick on little cars and they all pick on cyclists.
The only way I can see this changing is if everyone who wants to drive a car has to spend two years as a motorcyclist or a year on a bicycle.
If after the relevant number of years, you are still alive, you get to drive a car.
The most considerate drivers on the road today are the ones who either cycle or have ridden a two-wheeled vehicle at some time.
As for the walkers v cyclists, again I have to politely disagree, I still cycle off track, and walkers are almost as arrogant as car users, they hog the paths and clog up the tracks, walking in large groups blocking the whole of the path/track. They stick out their stick forcing cyclists in to ditches, or they deliberately spread out, making it impossible to pass. If as most of my friends do, you ring your bell merely to warn others of you approach, you get a mouthful of foul abuse or a sudden change of direction forcing you off your track in into the hedge. I’ve had little old lady ramblers trying to stick me (walking stick through the front wheel) and swearing at me as I avoid them.