PH wrote:In a discussion with a local plod, he thought pushing a bike along the pavement would class me as a pedestrian, pushing it in a vehicle lane would class me as cycling. I have no idea if he was right, but it seems a reasonable explanation and the situation was that I'd got off and pushed because I believed the lights to be faulty.
That fits what I found when I looked up a similar question in a college library in the mid-nineties. The book I found (which was not directly quoting the law, so could have been wrong) said that whether a person with a bicycle counts as a "road user"* or pedestrian depends on where they both are, not whether the person is sitting on the bike. Someone walking along a road with a bike was a road user, subject to traffic lights and other rules as if they were riding it. The same person with the same bike walking on a pavement or crossing a road via a zebra crossing was a pedestrian, not subject to traffic lights. Presumably, someone using a crossing with a bicycle could instantly lose (or gain) pedestrian status by simply turning a right angle.
It didn't cover the case of a person riding a bike on the pavement, but I took that to be prohibited under some other law.
*I'm sure of my recollection of the general principal, but less sure of the wording it used.
Edit: Tyop.