Originally Posted by LittleBigMan

I appreciate the gray areas, for without acknowledging them, one is unable to address reality.

I have a similar experience to yours, in that motorists tend to treat me with respect on the road, but at the same time, talking with coworkers and friends privately, most of them are amazed that I would ride a bike on the road with cars in traffic. This is not a gray area. This is a widespread attitude that cycling on the road in traffic is not normal.

Whether or not they've been taught that actively or passively, it's believed and reinforced on a daily basis. It's probably one of those widely-held beliefs that goes largely unnoticed until one of us comes along to turn over the rock and expose it. However, it has been my experience here in Atlanta that those who were raised here believe the sidewalk is where a bicycle should be ridden, and can recollect being taught so by parents.

It's not really far-fetched, since riding a bike on the sidewalk was my natural choice as a child until I was corrected on my way to school one day (I was taught to stay out of the street to protect me, and applied that teaching to bicycling as a child,) and is also what I sometimes see parents do when taking their small ones out for a ride, all of them tooling down the sidewalk together. I'm not sure I agree that teaching a very small child to ride on the sidewalk is a bad thing, since one needs special awareness of traffic before venturing out into the street where a car can end a life. But once one graduates to adolescence, or slightly before, one should learn to ride their bike on the road if they are ever going to adopt the bike as their way of getting around. Sadly, when most people hit that age, they simply graduate to a car, and keep their bikes-on-sidewalks attitude.

However, this does not mean that I am against building special facilities for cyclists. I am only pro-choice in that regard, as I want to be free to ride where I see fit. Sometimes that's on a path or bike lane, sometimes it's on the road without facilities. On the road, sometimes it's on main arteries, sometimes it's bypassing them on quiet residential neighborhood streets (some are kind of neat, with very old houses and such.)