Cycle lanes and the cycle lane mentality

Yes yes, I know, I've started with a very big topic to begin with but it's something I've seen coming up a lot of lately in videos on youtube where a video cyclist has been riding along at a fair pace in primary and a car pulls level with them as if they're overtaking, the window winds down and the occupants complain that the cyclist should be in the cycle lane or even worse, that they should be on the footway (pavement to those who don't realise) where it's illegal to ride, now I've had a couple of incidents like that myself before I got my own camera, one driver even shouted at me with these exact words "Get out the fucking road!!!" in a typical Southampton chav way and I shouted back that I was where I should be which technically is true, I mean there was a shared use path next to the road, should I have used it? At the time it might have been the better choice as all I was doing was running it into the ground until I could buy a new bike, did I HAVE to use the shared use facility? NO, a big problem for cyclists is that motorists can sometimes (I say sometimes as most aren't like it) believe that if there's a cycle lane that cyclists HAVE to use it or that they HAVE to ride in the gutter and that cyclists in the cycle lane are safe so long as their motorvehicle doesn't cross the dividing line yet contrary to these 3 beliefs, cyclists or not obliged by law to use cycle lanes or to stay over to the left in the gutter, cyclists are allowed to fully utilize the road just like any other road vehicle and cyclists are NOT safe if the motorist doesn't cross the dividing line no matter how close they are (There is a clip from my youtube channel at the bottom of the page, showing an exelent example of this last piece of cycle lane mentality that the driver of a double decker bus had), the only major difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle is the rather obvious lack of an engine and electronics on the bicycle, other than that there is no difference as in the eyes of the law, a bicycle is technically a road vehicle, also most cyclists who ride with good road positioning, generally only take primary when it's necessary such as at pinch points, passing parked cars, at roundabouts, at red lights, in traffic queues that are impossible to filter through, when passing junctions to make people waiting to pull out see them, when making a turn and when travelling along multi lane roads, another issue I have with cycle lanes is how inadequate they are, most are not wide enough and on many occasions I have found that they end without warning and rather abruptly only to restart a mile down the road for a few hundred meters before it stops again, shared use and segregated paths are even worse, to start with most are poorly sign posted, there is even one not even half a mile from me, it is designated as a shared facility on a map supplied by SOUTHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL(which can be found here Soton cycle map), yet there are absolutely 0 signs to indicate this, recently this led to a local cyclist being attacked by a pedestrian, the cyclist was riding along the shared path and came to a point where it narrows due to a deep ditch on one side and a bus stop/lay by on the other, the cyclist slowed and politely said "excuse me" to the pedestrians in front who didn't allow him to pass so he waited until he could safely go off onto the grass to pass them, as he did so one of the pedestrians said it wasn't a cycle path and the cyclist rightly so replied that it was, further down the road, the cyclist is sat in traffic and the pedestrian comes from behind and starts punching the cyclist in the back of the head until he's on the floor and then starts kicking him before walking off, now, that would probably not have happened had the path been adequately sign posted, it's the same in the city centre, the pedestrianized areas of the high street are marked on that very same map as being cycle routes yet they are completely devoid of any signs that say so and they also stop abruptly forcing you to take to the road at dangerous locations, bridle ways are just as bad, if not worse than shared use paths, not that I've used any bridle ways as the only ones I can find that are marked don't take me anywhere that I want to go to but pedestrians will assume that because they're often not marked as being usable by cyclists, that cyclists shouldn't be there which is wrong and this brings me onto off-road cycle paths which in my mind, are completely useless most of the time, most have pedestrians walking on them(not illegal but a bit of common sense please), they're hardly sign posted, they're often full of crap like sharp objects and actual CRAP that some lazy dog owner didn't pick up, they're often very short and many dump you off into the road after a sharp turn in front of traffic, tomorrow I will pay Southampton City Council a visit to ask why many of the off-road facilities in and around Southampton are inadequately sign posted and I will not leave without an answer, thank you for reading, Thursday I will be talking about the chimps from all sides, that is pedestrians, motorists and cyclists, again, thank you for reading and please comment your thoughts(but please keep it civil, trolls and abuse will not be tolerated), good bye for now and ride safe.