"Matt B" wrote in message
...

Surprisingly, the accident rate on pavements was no higher than on
cycleways. That's probably because pavement cyclists go so slowly: if
regular commuter cyclists like me were forced to use pavements the
accident rate would rocket.

Why would it?

An analogy would be closing motorways and "A" roads so that all commuter
traffic is forced onto narrow country lanes. The main problem would be
drastically increased journey times but I'd bet there would be a few more
accidents than usual.