driving around really dumb cyclists is quite difficult. cycling around them is almost lethal.

there are a *lot* of very dumb cyclists. fixing this seems to require a mixture of evangelism and kindergarten teacher ethics...albeit in small doses so as to not scare them off or offend them as evangelism tends to do. I actually don't see anything wrong with that article. it's a reasonable reaction to bad cyclists, who then color the drivers' impressions of all of us.

re: no-pay. unless you're car-free, you still pay into that. if you pay any taxes, you directly or indirectly support the roads (pay for one program, and money displaces to being usable on roads/oversimplified).

re: two abreast. if they're pacing traffic, so be it. roadies (woot) seem to be the least offensive in this, in that they either DON'T do it, or they slip into a single file in a reasonable amount of time. exceptions are the huge weekend rides where people seem to forget all road etiquette *sigh*

c/n: this is a two-sided problem with every bit as much wrong on the side of cyclists, as a population, as there is on the side of the complementing population of motorists.