Despite out public image, the reality is that our high density makes it impossible to coexist without courtesy.

If you scroll the forum looking for motorist/bike antagonism, I'll venture that in both numbers and degree you'll find the worst to be from less crowded areas where people tend to feel more entitles to free space, and intolerant of those they consider to be intruding into it.

There's also a cultural difference. New Yorkers and residents of other large cities are used to "controversy" and we tend to get by with a few loud words, along with gestures, then forgetting about it entirely within seconds. If we didn't develop out thick skins we couldn't function because we'd be fighting all he time.