That's... fucking retarded. It's not okay for a pedestrian to walk around in traffic because they're squishy. It's not okay for cyclists to ride on the sidewalk because their flimsy aluminum frame makes them slightly less squishy than the other squishy humans on the sidewalk. But it's not just okay but required that a squishy human with a little flimsy piece of aluminum ride around on the road with multi-ton steel blocks traveling twice the cyclist's speed.
How can you think this is a good system? People on sidewalks might get bruised if a bicycle hits them, so the bicycles have to be in the road?
Well, I was just looking up the UK laws on cycling, and the reason why bicylists have to go by road is that the bicycle is defined as a carriage. Therefor it has to use the road, not the pavement. I don't think its a bad system, but paths would be a very very silly idea for cyclists to use frequently. All kinds of shit happens on them, people suddenly walking out of doors, coming round corners and stuff and hitting cyclists.
All laws are basically a system of the-strong-shall-bend-to-the-weak. Hench the rights of way, it goes pedestrians, cyclists, motorcars. Its not perfect, but it works.
And having a bicycle fly into you is neither fun nor will it just bruise you. Theres so much stuff that drivers (and pedestrians) are really unaware of when it comes to watching out for cyclists. One of my all time fears while cycling is when I'm going downhill in a built up area with a lot of parked cars parallel with the street, on many occasion I've seen people pull open the door and I've narrowly missed smashing through the door windows.