Because every iteration of bike improvements has been fucked up. Isolated bike lanes that are painted where they can fit, but don’t properly connect anything. Bike lanes that are squeezed into part of a wider car lane. Designated shared bike/car lanes on 35mph roads that make cyclists a rolling obstruction to smooth traffic flow. Bike lanes squeezed between a travel lane and a parallel parking lane, causing exchange chaos, and double obstructions when city drivers double park in the bike lane. Widened shared pedestrian paths where cyclists are to pedestrians what cars are to bikes. Cyclists that think the bike lane isn’t for them. Cyclists going the wrong way. Cyclists taking their “right of way” sporadically, expecting drivers to read their minds. Bike lanes that barely overlap with my usual travel needs. Bike lanes in areas too sparse to be utilized for anything other than exercise.

I am a car lover. I am a motorcycle lover. I am a bicycle lover. I am a walking lover. I am a train lover. I am a bus lover. I use all modes of travels as they fit my needs and wants - how far, what logistics, what weather, what cargo, what fuel cost, what purpose.

That very thing you said at the end is usually already too much thinking for car brains

Prep the downvotes.

I live in a larger Canadian city. I used to commute via transit. Sometimes the bus driver would stop abruptly. Every time the driver needed to stop the bus hard - twice a month - it was a bicyclist driving erratically, like cutting off a transit bus or, in one case, brake-checking the bus.

I’ve almost been hit twice - same intersection, different days - by a cyclist running the red, shooting through the crosswalk I was on, and cursing me out for it.

I have an idea as to why drivers worry about more bikes on the roadways.

I’ve been abroad. I’ve seen segregated bikeways where there’s a ribbon of green space between bicyclists and cars. This works really well. What they’re doing here Does Not .

But the reverse is true, and this is why I do not envy bicyclists : they’re gonna die on these metro roadways where they are mixing bikes and cars and tractor-trailers and buses, and fast. I have no desire to be someone else’s lesson on blind spots.

If you ride in a town or city a lot, you know one big piece of the answer: jealousy.

If there are more cyclists, you’ll see them more often riding by you at red lights and lines of cars at stop signs. Drivers hate this; it reminds them that sometimes cars are slow, and they love their cars, so they get angry.

If there are more cyclists, drivers will have to be careful not to hit them, and being careful is annoying. Right now, depending where you live, the driver can say “almost no cyclists are out here, so I wasn’t expecting them, they need to be more careful”. And the drivers believe it, and their friends do, too. But more cyclists around would make those excuses look like the BS they actually are.

And related to the second point is that, if cyclists increase in number, they will demand (and get) more bike lanes and protected areas to ride and park. This will absolutely come at drivers’ expenses. Drivers know this. So even though fewer cars would decrease congestion, drivers know that they would be inconvenienced in other ways, and that would again remind them that they aren’t as important as they want to be.

Finally, in the US specifically, large SUVs and trucks are causing massive increases in dead pedestrians, children, and cyclists. The increased death rate over the last ten years is appallingly high. If cycling is normalized even more, clearly political opinion will shift, and those giant vehicles will be heavily restricted or taxed, or their insurance rates will skyrocket, or drivers will be charged more frequently with manslaughter for the death that they cause every day. People are reasonably afraid that their unreasonably large vehicles will be taken away from them.

🤷 People often do or say things that make no sense.

There is no logical reason to be ideologically pro car

because, overwhelmingly, they’re dumb and selfish and ignorant, and they choose to be that way.

some aren’t. some are willing to be educated. but not most.

I think some of why is related to how most people in a traffic jam go “damn this traffic” not “damn, I’m making this worse”

Imo, it should start with getting the MASSIVE cars and trucks off the roads. You wont convince us to get rid of our cars (i have many) because for a lot of us, we actually need them.

However, we DONT need Karen in an F350 that she takes to work and back by herself getting 5mpg and causing huge hazards due to massive blind spots. If only we could ban these vehicles or require better licenses that would at least help. I myself hate large cars, and only have a pickup (single cab, 40 years old, long box,) for hauling lumber or other house construction materials. All my other cars are under 3200 lbs. Even next to a new crossover they look TINY. And this further makes people who drive those monstrosities drive and act like assholes.

This will never change though. Redneck outrage would be too big a pushback and you cant change what car mfgs are doing.

If I had it my way, the only car youd be allowed to have is a miata, and a ute for work. If you have more than 2 kids you can get a wagon.