mnemia

The one I hear all the time is simply that some cyclist was "riding in the middle of the lane!!!" usually voiced as if they should know what they're doing is illegal. I always point out that it's NOT necessarily illegal to do that, and give a quick explanation of the FRAP law. Almost every motorist I've had this conversation with in a friendly context has been very surprised when I laid it out for them. The other one I hear is that "all" cyclists supposedly run stop signs and red lights. I can't defend that one, so I just say that I personally stop for all of them. And I also usually point out that most motorists don't always fully stop for stop signs either, and so it's not really much different.

The biggest problem is that most motorists are at least somewhat ignorant of the rules of the road. And almost all motorists who are not cyclists themselves are ignorant of the specific rules of the road pertaining to cyclists. A surprisingly large percentage of them truly think we're breaking the law whenever we aren't hugging the curb. This situation really needs to be addressed by police and DMV driver retraining at license renewal time, as apparently no one is ever even telling most of these motorists that they are wrong. But there just doesn't seem to be much political will for the idea of actually requiring motorists to know the rules of the road before they're allowed to drive on them.