Originally Posted by John Forester

Cycling has been the subject of political controversy since about 1944, then the law decided that bicycles were not vehicles and therefore that their use could be restricted, through restrictive laws, in ways that would be intolerable to those in political power, the motorists. Some cyclists recognized that obeying the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles was better for them than obeying the restrictive laws, so there was a political controversy between two groups of road users, motorists and cyclists. However, while this was a political controversy, it was very lowkey and was confined to the actual traffic operating subject, because the motorists believed that nearly all cycling was juvenile and insignificant.

The "bike boom" that started in the 1960s caused motorists to recognize that adult cycling had not died. They decided, in California in 1971, to crack down on cyclists by creating a bikeway system that would force all cyclists to obey the restrictive laws (and new ones also). That sharpened the political conflict between motorists and cyclists.

Shortly after the motorists created the bikeway system designs, cycling became extremely political. Groups with any kind of agenda that could conceivably be tied to anti-motoring (oil crisis, air pollution, suburbia, road building, car manufacture, obesity, national defense, you've seen them all) jumped into the controversy on the side of the motorists. They chose to support the motorists' side of the bikeway controversy because they believed the motorists' lying propaganda that bikeways made cycling safe for incompetent cyclists. So, ever since 1975 bicycle transportation has been the field for intense political activity conducted by interests outside the field of cycling.