Originally Posted by Second Mouse

...and a large chunk of the bike culture centers around practicality, rather than recreation or racing. They have dedicated bike lanes with their own semaphores, for God's sake. They also tend to have local markets, close to home, so it makes sense to have a bike that carries two kids and a couple sacks of groceries from home, to the market and back home. Not a significant distance.

Don't know about you, but where I live, probably 80% of the cyclists on the street are wearing spandex, not work or casual apparel. So I guess the answer to the OP's question is "probably not". Not for a while, anyway. What do you think?

Originally Posted by bovine

Feel free to get off your high horse and recognize that biking in the U.S. is primarily the pursuit of fit people, and just because they like faster bikes doesn't mean they're vain egoists who put fashion above pragmatism.