Mrs Briggs was stranded in the middle of the road as there was traffic approaching in both directions and a HGV to the left creating a pinch point. Alliston chose to proceed when it should have been clear to him that the pedestrian was in an invidious position - if he had braked hard he would have given Mrs Briggs the opportunity to return to the pavement. By continuing forward at speed he made the situation more dangerous than he needed to. You can argue that this is 20/20 hindsight, but where possible braking to avoid a collision is usually preferable to swerving as it massively reduces the unpredictability factor of the other road user.
See, I'm not sure I buy that. It is very hard to deliberately have a collision. Generally if you realise you are going to have a collision you instinctively take evasive action.
As you say in hindsight it may not have been good or effective evasive action. It may have been hampered by the brakes. But I'm not sure that makes the riding up to that point dangerous in and of itself. The part where I started to lose confidence in the judge is where she implies that CA somehow "forced" himself past the HGV, which is clearly nonsense.
CA himself admitted that he misjudged the ped, that she stepped back into his intended path rather than continuing forwards. People misjudge other people's path all the time, we are all subject to it with SMIDSYs often with severe injuries but they do not result in a dangerous driving charge because it is put down to a "mistake".
Perhaps if the judge and jury were keen cyclist they would realise that cyclists make mistakes too. They are often on bikes with poor stopping distances in the wet. That does not mean they are dangerous cyclists.
