Not Just Bikes just did a video about one guy who was a major influence for how bikes are perceived in the US.

It’s pretty long but the tl;dw is one weirdo lobbied hard to treat bikes like cars - “vehicular cycling” - and looked down on bike paths, comfortable seats, and not being a jerk.

You can thank the vehicular cycling movement of the 1970s for selling the idea that bicycles should operate like cars on American roadways.

(To anyone at all interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading the linked article for more context. Or watching the Not Just Bikes video in Boomer Humor Doomergod's comment if that's more your speed.)

Because our road systems are designed around cars. This means that it's dangerous and impeding when a cyclist shares the road. Unfortunately, we just keep building bigger roads and removing bike lanes. This just serves to make it more of a pain in the ass for literally everyone because bikers have to use the car lanes instead of just paving an extra 6 feet of road.

TL;DR america will pave every natural surface for traffic, but won't mark any sliver of it for bikes.

I have been commuting by bicycle in the US (Sioux Falls, SD and Chicago, IL) for thirty years, from age twelve to forty-two. It has never been a point of conflict with anyone in my life, law enforcement, or employers. I really don't know what you mean by "controversial" here; it doesn't match my experience.

They don't consume fossil fuels to operate. Can't have masses of people not enslaved to their car and its operations since that might hurt some big corporations bottom line.

Our roads are designed around cars, it's very often extremely frustrating and unsafe to have to share the road with bikes.

As an example, most of my commute is along a 2 lane road (1 lane each direction) that's winding, poorly lit, and has almost no shoulder. The speed limit is 35mph, which isn't a speed most cyclists can keep up for very long if they can reach it at all.

If there's traffic coming the opposite direction, it's often difficult or impossible to pass that cyclist safely so very often I've been stuck driving 10 under the speed limit around a cyclist I can't get around.

And again, it's a windy, poorly lit road, coming around a corner it would be very easy to hit a cyclist if I wasn't being careful (which I am, but many are not)

To add insult to injury in my particular case, there's actually a very nice bike path that runs directly parallel to the road, you can actually see it from the road for much of its length, and there's lots of places to get on and off of it, it's paved, it's actually almost as wide as the road itself.

There's also the issue that a lot of them don't always follow the rules of the road, you see a lot of the lane-splitting, running red lights, etc.

And there's good reasons for some of that behavior, I've heard them, I don't disagree with them, but the fact of the matter is that it makes them unpredictable, which is the last thing you want to be on the road.

Some also ride at night without proper lights and reflectors, which is really a problem with some idiots and shouldn't be generalized to bikes in general, but some people are going to do that

There's also Americans' love of big SUVs with big blindspots that makes bikes harder to see when they're around you in traffic.

As for ebikes, I have a love-hate relationship with them.

They can keep up with traffic a lot better, which helps my first point a lot.

They've also gotten a lot of people out on bikes who wouldn't have otherwise, which is great, but it also means that a lot of those people are going from not having ridden a bike since they were like 10 years old to feeling bold enough to be out in traffic because their bike can keep up but never really learned how to coexist with traffic on a bike, so we're doubling down on the unpredictability.

There's also the issue that out of traffic, in spaces where e bikes coexist with pedestrians and regular bikes on trails and such they're often zooming around at unsafe speeds.

And there's the usual patchwork of laws and regulations from one state to another, and a lot of shady imported brands selling bikes that don't meet those regulations. A lot of the e bikes on the road around me are overpowered and too fast for what the laws allow. And people also let their kids ride them which also isn't allowed.

I'm all for more people riding bikes in general , but the current situation with infrastructure, regulations, enforcement, and education here make it a really unsafe and frustrating to share the road with bikes.

Cars are both an addictive drug and a religion, car drivers for the most part can't admit either. A happy normal person using a bicycle for something practical is a direct threat to the fragile mental landscape established by many people because it brings an awareness of their drug use and zealotry to the surface.

Not bashing drugs or religion, this is a problem of buried collective denial fundamentally.

i don't get it either. i prefer road bikes. I used to commute 14 miles a day in Seattle and I loved the hell out of it. Motorists are usually the worst kind of bike haters.

I didn't notice much hate from other types of cyclists but one of my friends in Portland Oregon would call me lame for needing two wheels. he would unicycle everywhere. even mt biking! he once won some crazy competition from a unicycle mud race!

I blame lycra. It threatens men.