It’s a statement that’s guaranteed to raise hackles, but I admit: I cycle on pavements. This has become a controversial thing to say after the recent manslaughter conviction of Auriol Grey, who waved and shouted as Celia Ward cycled towards her in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire – resulting in the retired midwife falling into the road to her death. Many have responded to the case by saying no cyclist should be let on the pavement ever again. But I think this misses something important.

I may be a lone voice in this but I feel the blanket hatred of pavement cyclists is misplaced

To qualify my statement, I must point out that I only ride on the pavement at a time and place when I rarely if ever encounter any pedestrians – and if I do I immediately give way and dismount as the situation deems appropriate.

Specifically, I do it on the rather steep hill that leads from my house to the local tube station at around 6.30 am.

The reason I use the pavement rather than the road is that the latter option is, frankly, dangerous: although the speed limit is 30mph it’s a wide, straight stretch of road with no traffic calming, on which cars routinely go at 40 mph or more – sometimes much more. So it’s terrifying to ride up unless you are off road.

There is an alternative route to the station via a cycle lane, of sorts, but that takes you through a park where there are many more pedestrians and joggers, as well as dogs running at odd angles. So although it’s legal to cycle that way, it’s perversely more likely to be dangerous to pedestrians and their pets than the route I use. Furthermore a near neighbour was rather violently mugged in the same spot recently so forgive me if I’m not overly keen on venturing there alone in the dark.

I didn’t always ride on the pavement, it must be said. Over the last 30 years I must have cycled tens of thousands of miles on the mean streets of London and I did almost all of it on roads and cycle lanes – and almost never crossed the kerb.

But lately I’ve lost my bottle. Particularly since I gave up daily commuter cycling I have found my confidence waning. I’ve simply been knocked off or come off too many times. Since I first had stitches in my scalp after a crash in 1978, I must have had at least 25 accidents, breaking a wrist and a collarbone among many other scrapes, most caused by cars, buses or vans. This is despite always using lights: I’ve been hit while lit-up like a Christmas tree.

So, while I still stick to the road on quieter stretches, the days when I would happily race on two wheels around London’s cycling death traps like Hyde Park Corner or the pre-reconfiguring roundabouts at Elephant and Castle, are over. And lately, for me, Waterfall Road, N14 falls into the death trap category.

Yet even when I’m demonstrably not a nuisance to pedestrians – as there aren’t any – I’ve still had people, while speeding past in their cars, yell: ‘Get off the f***ing pavement’ at me.

Those were the very words reportedly said by Auriol Grey to Celia Ward before she died. Grey does appear to have been harshly treated and is appealing her conviction. Nevertheless, her hostile-to-cyclist mindset did underpin that grim case.

I may be a lone voice in this but I feel the blanket hatred of pavement cyclists is misplaced: it’s not cycling in pedestrian spaces per se that’s bad, it’s doing it inconsiderately that’s the real issue. Why shouldn’t older people or children learning to ride do so in safety off road? Obsessing about bikes on pavements is, I suspect, often a displacement after having been stuck behind cyclists on country roads where they are legal but a nuisance to motorists. See one on a pavement and you can legitimately rebuke them.

The other recent incident that brought the question to national attention came when Dame Joan Collins was on her way to Rules restaurant for dinner and was hit by ‘a masked cyclist with no lights’ and ‘almost knocked over’. Addressing the London Mayor, Collins asked: ‘Why don’t you do something before this beautiful city is ruined?’ In fact Sadiq Khan had already done something, having presumably been behind the decision to close Maiden Lane, where she was struck, to cars but not bicycles in the first place.

The spot where Dame Joan was hit is a pinch point where cyclists and pedestrians come together. And these are the real danger zones in the modern metropolis: where designated lanes and pavements coincide, where pedestrians and cyclists are supposed to coexist happily and safely but don’t. Because too often the former are looking at their phones or absorbed in headphone-piped music and the latter going too fast to adjust to a sudden person on foot in their path.

For example, also near us, in Palmers Green, north London, Enfield Council recently spent a great deal of time and money putting in cycling lanes on the main shopping street. But without demolishing buildings this meant having to accommodate them by squeezing existing pavements. Now the two occupy the same space and while cycling is immeasurably better now, walking is much more of a minefield.

I’m not just a cyclist, but a motorist and, crucially, a pedestrian too: I do my 10,000 daily steps mostly inside the M25. I have nearly hit people while cycling – the cycle lane outside the Lyceum Theatre ten minutes before the bell of the Lion King is a chaos of people on foot, it’s better to just give up and get off. And I’ve been nearly hit while on foot – coming out of the Kings Arms just off Borough High Street means people on two wheels whizzing past at 20mph just in front of you as you’re emerging from the pub fuzzy with beer.

It’s not where you ride but how you ride that’s the real issue. Pavements are just a distraction – and you shouldn’t be distracted on a pavement or you might get hit by a cyclist.