Ignoring the horrendous idiot for a minute look at the story why even mention the cycle path in the opening part of the story.
You have to ask why and what do you hope to achieve. To right we have a right to be in the road.
To be fair, the cycle path is quite wide, well-protected by barriers, and very obvious, and has been there a long time. It links the town centre with the college, so it gets a fair bit of use, and people are used to seeing cyclists on it. So from the car driver's point of view, a cyclist on the road is perhaps less common than in other parts of the town, and to someone unaware of the Highway Code it might seem strange that a cyclist might want to risk it in the traffic rather than use the cycle path like most others. I'm not saying what he did was right (far from it, he should have been locked up and had his licence inserted rectally as far as I am concerned), but the existence of the cycle path is a significant part of the story IMO, to explain why the driver acted as he did. I have cycled that way many times, by the way, and I have never used the cycle path, so it could have been me. I hope she takes him to court and gets significant compensation.
