Perhaps one of the key ways to get cyclists (and drivers) to use their vehicles on the carriageway is to stop using the generic term Pavement, as this describes a paved surface, which is generally provided to facilitate the passage of traffic, and applies to both elements of the Highway, and for news reports, and the public at large to start using the legally correct terms.
A Footway has for at least the 178 years of the Highways Act, been the part of the highway solely for use of traffic on foot. The Carriageway however is the place where carriages are meant to be driven, and beasts driven or ridden. Unlike hastily drafted modern legislation, the elegance of the Highways Act of 1835 saw the bicycle formally defined as a carriage in 1888, and the motor car thus defined in 1903, and under section 72 of said Act (for England & Wales - Scotland has Roads, and different legislation) it is illegal to drive a carriage on the footway.
Thus as a campaign to keep the footway clearly recognised as the domain solely for traffic on foot can the media, and public at large please start using the term Footway. It makes a far more powerful case to report that the cycle or the car was being driven on a Footway, than on a Pavement.
A damning set of figures reported from a YouGov survey reveals that for the UK overall 64% of drivers admitted that they drove their cars on a footway, with the NorthEast of England having the worst rate of offending. Given that this offence can be swiftly dealt with by a Fixed Penalty Notice, the mis-match between FPN's issued and the self-confessed levels of offending suggests that we have a major issue to address here. It is one where some roads authorities (Councils) carry a portion of the blame by their own ambivalence, by marking out footways with parking bays, or creating cycle routes on the cheap instead of designing and building a route to accommodate vehicular traffic.
Scots it turns out are relatively good drivers - only 60% confessed to driving on a footway, one of the lowest figures in the poll
The position is hardly helped by the failure for successive parliaments to deliver a simple correction to legislation to permit the use of photographic evidence that a motor vehicle is being or has been driven on a footway, in the same way that such evidence is already used to require the registered keeper of the vehicle either takes the fine (and penalty points) for failing to stop at a traffic signal, exceeding the speed limit or ignoring a TRO for use of the road, or provides details of the driver at the time.
Of course for cycling, there is the need to lead by example, and in Glasgow I've be greatly disappointed to regularly see Police cyclists riding on the footway with no excuse that it is for an emergency or pursuit of criminals, often using narrow footways, with the hazards of street furniture and blind opening doorways, and with the carriageway deserted.
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