If you ride on the road I’ll drive on the cycle path
Plenty of drivers already do don’t they? Half full of parked cars and drivers edging round each other at junctions.
I was bumped by a car last year, strangely enough I was actually using the cycle Lane (well, painted line in the gutter) at the time He just didn’t fancy using his wing mirror it seems, nobody was hurt fortunately…
To me such occurrences simply illustrate that many bits of our ‘bolt on’ cycling infrastructure aren’t really much use and don’t magically prevent incidents…
They actually make things worse IMO, by mostly removing cyclists from drivers sphere of attention and then Dumping them back to merge with motorised traffic at busy junctions and roundabouts, and then there’s the danger cyclists using the assigned bits of painted pavement pose to ipodded pedestrians, even at ~10-12 mph you could do some damage… Many ped’s simply aren’t aware, of or paying attention on shared use sections of pavements…
In the real world (Outside of that there London) you’re mostly safer using your bicycle on the road. Impatient drivers will always be impatient, remove cyclists and they’d just start trying to bully someone else.