Originally Posted by
bsut
Yes, it could have. That's why I don't ride through stopped traffic
So if traffic is totally jammed, you don't move, even if there's a lane between cars, or cars and the pavement? You accept the delays that a car faces, and the lower speed while moving of a bike??? I believe you if you say you do, but if you live in a big city where this is really relevant, you're c-r-a-z-y. Walking would be faster. Probably even if you carried your bike.
What "turn"? A jam isn't a queue, you're not taking the place a car driver deserves if you cycle forward through a gap it can't use. You just need to exercise more technique than you did with that hedge and look out for blind spots.
You're describing traffic rules. They work fine on the roadway, because you're mixing similar participants (motorists and cyclists) under the same rules. But on a sidewalk/pavement you're trying to mix dissimilar participants (pedestrians and cyclists) which fundamentally can't work.
Cars and cyclists are pretty damn dissimilar too. Dissimilar doesn't necessarily mean unsafe. Stopping distance and gaps are what matter; what makes a competently ridden slow moving bike on a broad uncrowded pavement a real hazard? What if the bike is moving at walking speed? I'm still not sure that I really support even very limited pavement cycling, but I don't trust the "dissimilar" argument. It's more rhetoric than physics.