Actually, motorists have cyclists to thank for well-paved roads in the first place, which have been usurped by the car lobby.
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BTW, this is the type of bike my Dad learnt to ride on:
Among their other quirks, they didn’t have a return spring on the throttle (so that you could shoot without slowing down). It also had no rear suspension.
So, my Dad was learning to ride, going around a dirt oval in the Australian bush, wearing rubberised canvas overalls (because leather was thought to be too rebellious for the Army).
Things were going okay until he hit a pothole. That kicked him out of the seat into a handstand above the handlebars. Naturally, his hands involuntarily tightened up a bit, so that when he fell back onto the bike in flying-Superman pose, he accidentally wound the throttle on full.
He was also no longer riding around the oval; he was now charging straight into the bush. And, thanks to the lack of throttle spring, he couldn’t shut it off by just loosening his hand.
He managed to shut it down eventually, but he’d bounced off quite a few trees before that happened. 
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Not a bad list of whys.
Lane splitting (a.k.a. filtering) has always felt safer to me than sitting in stop-and-go traffic. The odds of being rear-ended are higher than the odds of being sandwiched. It does take more skill, judgment, and effort. For example, be especially cautious passing a car with a gap in the lane next to it. But I would not ride in congested areas if it was not allowed.
On riding side-by-side, note that some law enforcement agencies have additional training devoted to just this behavior for pairs of their officers. It is not clear to me what advantage there is in having two officers ride side-by-side but it is common.
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That guy seems like a pretty conscientious rider, unlike this dangerous, disrespectful douchebag:
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Holy crap… That is some seriously dangerous shit.
I am so glad I survived my 20s.
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He was an English guyyyy, He came to fight the Tuuuuuurkish
Mine would be pick a lane. What is it with people who drive straight down the dashed line between two lanes?
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Not in the U.S., obviously, or you’d have mentioned him being shot dead.
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Bill Jr., he was a daredevil!
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Funny how the “loud pipes are for safety” crowd aren’t ever wearing full-face helmets, leather boots, appropriate pants, full leather jacket, an orange reflective vest, gloves, and have their headlight on.
Usually it’s really loud pipes (for safety), a wife-beater, a mushroom cap helmet (where the law requires, otherwise none), shorts, and tennis shoes.
No, these guys are just asshole attention-whores.
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Is that a WLA?
In WW2 the British Army used horrible M20s and 16Hs, totally gutless sidevalves, but a few fortunate home users got Velocette MACs, considered highly desirable. Even a WLA was a significant improvement over a British sidevalve.
Obviously not an Audi or a BMW as none of them seem to have indicators.
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That’s 90% of the bikers in my area. Well OK, probably only 15% of them, but they’re the ones I notice and so generalize from.
Seriously, I think many of the cars v. bikes debates on the internet are between conscientious bikers and conscientious drivers each of whom are thinking mainly about the assholes in the other group. As a driver and bicyclist I’m hugely aware of how vulnerable non-cars are on the road, so I try to be super-cautious around them, and the bikes who are not equally cautious back make me very nervous. I assume the more assholic drivers don’t really think about what happens when you hit a bike, so don’t have as intense reaction to bikes doing dangerous things around them.
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Yeah, couldn’t tell.
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Yup. Australian Army Reserve, 1960’s.
They also had vintage WWII rations. 
Oh my fuck yes. Thankfully, they’re not that common around my way; some small fraction of a percent. But what are heaps more common are the ninnies who have no clue how wide their car is.
There’s a residential street around the corner from my place that everyone uses as an arterial because the parallel arterial has been stuffed full of traffic lights over the years; it has ‘traffic calming’ bits (AKA chicanes) along it that stick out into the road a little bit past the parked cars. The thing is, there’s still room for two cars to pass between them, even a bus and a car in a pinch. And there are cateye reflectors a few inches out from the chicanes, so you can feel via your outside wheels when you’re making the most room.
But there’s no centre line down the street, which is apparently vital for some drongos, who weave left and right as they head down the street, to allow great yawning gaps between their vehicle and the parked cars and the oncoming ones, and they usually brake to a halt to allow an oncoming car to pass through a chicane alone. I sit behind them, going dead straight, with a safe gap between the parked cars and oncoming ones, but they never get the hint… apparently my ability to picture a line down the centre of the road and have a clue of the width of my car is some rare gift.
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In Melbourne, it’s the Mercedes drivers who are the most selfish arseholes. And the oblivious fuckwit prize goes to 90% of the drivers of new Toyota Camrys and Aurions.
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Let me guess, they’re mostly in SUVs as well? Around here you come across all sorts of people who seemed hell bent on buying the largest vehicle they could and then never bothered to figure out where the hell the passenger side of it was.
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As a cyclist, I’m an anarchist, following only one rule; my own: stay out of the way, with reference of course to who has right of way, among other factors. I’m sure I look like I have a death wish to many motorists, but I’m just refusing to be impeded by laws that were written with only lip-service to cyclists, and that disregard the fact that cyclists have the most right to the road - ‘driving’ a car is an historically rare privilege, but ‘riding’ a bike will always be a birthright. (You actually ride in a car and drive a bike, dammit.)
As a motorist, apparently crazy cyclists don’t bother me at all, since whatever they’re doing, they only want me to behave predictably, and they know better than anyone that their life is in their own hands.
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I think now you’re generalizing from yourself to other cyclists; there are many people on bicycles who evidently believe they are immortal. (This is especially true around college campuses in the US.)
