> So much North American rhetoric is focused on hatred of the cyclist
My impression is that only people in the bicycling social world believe that. It seems like a victim mentality that they reinforce by repeating it to each other. It's always possible I just haven't seen it, but localities around the country are building bicycling infrastructure, which doesn't correspond to hatred. Where do you see it?
I hardly ever hear someone expressing hatred of cyclists. People who ride obviously like it. The great majority don't care about it - it has little impact on their lives. In cities, on streets I see people honk at, yell at, and flip off cyclists just like they honk, flip off, and yell at other drivers. IME the cyclists generally 'drive' as well/poorly as the automobile drivers.
I do notice that people in spandex racing outfits on road bikes tend to behave with attitude problems toward everyone - pedestrians, non-racing cyclists, cars, etc. They are aggressive and fly by people, often with little margin, at dangerous speeds without warning. It's as if they think they own the road. I was just talking to a bike mechanic I know who brought it up. If people don't like them, it's obvious why.
Some drivers seem to resent the idea that they should have to share the road, or slow down for anyone. Even if cyclists do everything right, they're still slower than cars, and so will present at least a minor inconvenience for drivers.
In Canada the fight has gotten nasty, with governments in Alberta and Ontario putting forward legislation that could remove existing bike lanes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-ford-bike-lan...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-government-b...
Maybe "hatred" is too strong of a word, but if I were a cyclist in Toronto or Edmonton I'd feel rather victimized.
Cyclists never do everything right, though. Contested stop signs are a prime example. For every cyclist who stops properly, 99 blaze through with attitude. They are lawless, and cause safety issues for drivers who have to deal with it.
You’ll also see them run red lights, cut off pedestrians, bike right into oncoming traffic (in the same lane, no less), cut across three lanes of without blinking. All in the name of laziness, not safety.
While I think cycling is great - environmentally, for health, apparently for mental health - bikes and cars don't mix unless they are going approx. the same speed in 1-2 lanes.
Driving a car, bicycles are hard to see - I wouldn't be surprised if visibility in cars is specified to be sufficient to see other cars. Bicycles appear out of nowhere and disappear. Also, cyclists - no better or worse than their automobile counterparts - don't always drive well, and they do things that cars don't such as weaving through small spaces between cars; running lights as if they are pedestrians, but on the road; appearing from sidewalks and other places - really anyplace. I don't object to creative driving - as I said, (city) drivers aren't much different in their way - but it makes bikes unpredictable and hard to see. Then there's the speed difference - bikes much slower than traffic are as dangerous as cars driving that speed (again, except I can see the cars). As long as there's one lane - and if cyclists 'own the lane' and don't let cars squeeze by - it's safe: you can see the bike; multiple lanes and the bike ends up in blind spots, weaving back and forth itself, etc.
I read that in (Belgium? The Netherlands?) the law is that if there is a small (10 km/h?) difference in speed between cars and bikes, they cannot share the road.
We just had a death on the road, from a driver hitting a cyclist in a group. I'm a life-long cyclists, and I now am somewhat fearful about cycling on the road. I see so many groups that take an entire lane and not even care about the cars behind them - it's easy to understand the frustration of the drivers. It's a knotty problem, I wish we had more bicycle lanes.
Obviously I wasn't there for the "taking the lane" circumstances you've seen, but where I live there are very few sections of road where it would be safe for a vehicle to attempt to occupy the lane while a group of cyclists are in it, and cars should be overtaking instead. It's no more difficult for a car to overtake when the cyclists are "taking the lane."
As a general rule, with this kind of thing, if you're not in a group that's targeted by such comments, you are probably not going to see those comments. Even if the majority don't care, it only takes a small hateful minority to create a lot of hate aimed at a given group.
Yes, many bicyclists are straight up obnoxious and unsafe, and without any license plates on the bikes, it’s hard to hold them to the proper lawful behavior.
You clearly haven't spent much time on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, FaceBook, or really anywhere there is a huge community. Americans fucking HATE cyclists.
> The great majority don't care about it
My own dad will take any opportunity to actively bitch about perceived annoyances perpetrated by cyclists and opine about how useless bike lanes are expensive and not actually productive because people only use them for exercise. Why don't you try actually bringing up cyclists and bike lanes somewhere, especially in the south, and then you tell me what people think.
Drivers mostly hate on other drivers, but they make time to hate other road users as well.
> Americans fucking HATE cyclists.
I haven't met those Americans, somehow. Maybe it's just more social media nonsense - people joining the mob fun and far overestimating the loud voices?
Did you ask them? Lots of things I don't like don't come up until it's relevant.
I'm sure lots of cyclists have anecdata about that hatred. My personal favorite was somebody in a Santa Clara neighborhood a block from the DMV shouting at me to "get off the f***ing road!" Clearly they didn't read the part of the DMV manual that mentions that bicycles must "not ride on the sidewalk"[1], and missed that cyclists are allowed full use of the lane.
I now live in rural suburban Michigan, and even on these rural backroads I have jerks in trucks yelling at me on my e-bike going 20+ mph to "get out of the f***ing way".
Maybe those people do not represent the majority, but it feels like they do, and those actions feel threatening when coming from a multi-ton vehicle directed at a 75 pound vehicle. (Fat-bike ebikes are heavy.) It's also odd to experience this on a rural road on a lake shoreline because isn't the countryside supposed to be slow paced?
1. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/california-driver-han...
My personal favorite was someone shouting "go back to California!" our their window. I'm a TN native born and raised.
Second favorite was, a truck did an illegal pass maneuver around me on a blind turn (another 15s and we'd be around the curve) and almost hit another truck head on, then raced off. The driver of the truck that almost got hit rolled down his window and asked me "do you really have to ride here?"
None of this has been my experience.