What's really annoying about these articles is that, almost invariably, they start talking about what cyclists are doing wrong, not about what car drivers are doing wrong.
Bingo. There's a sociological pattern at play here.
People are dissatisfied with their lives because they are not as [rich, beautiful, happy, fulfilled, respected] with their lives as they think they should be. This is a result of [poor decisions, universal life problems, mean people, poor health, innappropriate priorities].
However, scape-goating is much easier then thinking about your own life honestly.
Scape-goating requires picking something external, and of a smaller group than the one that you have defined yourself into. So you choose [Blacks, Jews, Liberals, Republicans, the Man, Bicyclists, Hippies, Catholics, rednecks] Whatever.
Once you've chosen your scape-goat, you start blaming them for everything. And since you're mad at them, it's only a matter of time before you wrong them. But, when you do, you must then blame the victim for the crime, even if they personally are innocent, by talking about the alleged behavior of their peers. And of course, there is always going to be some level of truth to the accusation, because of a myriad factors, including the fact that we are individuals, and some of any group are going to behave poorly.
Of course, that's entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether this one person deserved to be assaulted.
And then, the scape-goated will become divided about whether to rebel , or appease the scape-goaters by getting mad at the bad behavior of their fellow scape goated (i.e. you're giving us a bad name). And neither side is 100% right or wrong.
But only a few people out of all the players her will ever, after all this, simply analyze their own lives and motivations, make high level decisions about their goals and priorities, and follow them. The rest of us just keep playing along with a game that no one can really win.