Originally Posted by John Forester
Well, of course. They are typical Americans, with that perverted view of cycling and its dangers. That's why they think that support of bike lanes is normal. However, note one of the immediately previous postings by someone else, claiming that Americans don't believe that cyclists have the right to use the roadways. I have always written that the cyclist-inferiority superstition, in its stronger versions, meets all the criteria for a phobia except rarity. That is, it is an irrational exaggeration of the fear of same-direction motor traffic that causes people to choose actions that are harmful to them.
You are so wrong about this. Americans who self-identify as motorists DO NOT support the installation of bike lanes. I've participated in plenty of transportation planning projects at the advisory committee level and almost universally, motorists oppose bike lanes because they feel that bike lanes take space in the right-of-way away from motorists. Motorists absolutely DO NOT support bike lanes because they believe they get bicyclists out of the way of motorists, that's just a load of crap.
OTOH, bicyclists support bike lanes because a lot of cyclists understand that cycling in the bike lane relieves a lot of the stress of having to bicycle in the travel lane, at the whim and behest of highly unpredictable and frequently aggressive and dangerous motorists.