Originally Posted by halfspeed
Indeed. My "feeling" is that far more are intimidated by cars, dogs, hills and weather than by the small number of internet posters who don't see any other way of riding than intense exercise.
I agree that the bicycling environment is the biggest intimidation factor. I doubt that many potential cyclists pay any attention at all to Internet discussion list posters, IMO, the counter productive (to bicycling advocacy) "intense exercise" attitude prevails in the North American milieu of the available bike publications/books, biking enthusiast clubs, and sales rap of the Bicycling Marketers and LBS outlets for their product.