I don't want to be too much of a debbie downer and scare you from riding in Texas, but there's a lot of the "my truck rules the road, get off and pay road taxes" attitude, which is really a Southern thing I guess. I could very well be generalizing since most of my riding has ever been in Texas, but I've ridden across the country twice, so I have my fair share of experiences.

Austin is a great town for cycling because it's relatively small in geography compared to other Texas towns, and the terrain of the hill country is awesome! It's a great place for the outdoors. A LOT of cyclists ride 360 and various West Austin highways all the time throughout the week. It's definitely always a better idea to ride with others if you can for better visibility purposes. Most hit-and-run or driver intimidation stories typically happen in the city at night, and I'm sure those stories are shared across the country.

But one thing that clouds my mind about the driver-cyclist relationship in Texas is the justice system's seemingly disregard for the life of cyclists. There are several big stories in recent years of car-bike collisions resulting in a cyclist's death due to driver negligence where the driver did stop (sometimes immediately, sometimes not until they realized the bike was being dragged by their car), but the driver always seems to get off with pretty much nothing. It's frustrating because the driver that takes the life of a cyclist gets off easier than the driver that hits another car and causes a few broken bones and bruises.

While Austin is often considered the cycling mecca of Texas (whether by the slowly improving infrastructure or by Lance Armstrong), the attitude towards and treatment of cyclists is nowhere near the likes of the Pacific Northwest or Minneapolis.