I agree with this. I know people who are afraid of hurting bicyclists and dislike seeing them because of this. Generally, it doesn't seem to be liability so much as guilt that these people are afraid of, but in any case, they aren't the ones who hate cyclists.

I think hate of cyclists is really hate of traffic, but cyclists are the only outlet for manifesting that hate. I can (and personally do when driving) blow my top about the thousands of cars on the road causing rush hour grid lock, but at the end of the day my mind refuses to process that anger into hatred because all the other people are doing the same thing I'm doing and for the same reason. I can (and do when driving) get angry at the people causing traffic jams by rubber necking as they pass a roadside distraction, but I have no contact with these people and when there is no traffic jam I have no way of identifying (or even mis-identifying) other drivers as the ones who were responsible for this and no way of lumping them into a group that I can hate. I can (and do when driving) get angry at the traffic engineers who I am irrationally certain could have designed the roads better than they did, but I never see these people and have no idea who they are.

Bicyclists, on the other hand, are easy to distinguish from other road users, easy to blame for traffic slow downs and indistinguishable from one another and therefore easy to lump into a group as an outlet for the cumulative frustration of daily traffic.