> In reality, the effective space taken by cyclist on genera purpose road is bigger than a car — you need a huge safety margin to overtake a cyclis
More than a car? I've certainly not been given more space when people overtake me. Remember a car is 6 feet wide, that's quite a bit of space already that's taken up by a car.
Also, when you have a decent number of cyclists and congested roads they often do travel in packs. See here for an example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-4ynw8672A
or here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuxmiNsHmA
The city in these videos has many cyclists (and one of the most successful bike-share schemes in the world), but rather scandalously provides very little bike infrastructure and even less enforcement (bike lanes are generally used for parking).
Finally, you might wish to note that one generally refers to "riding" a bike in English, rather than "driving". The same goes for motorcycles in most contexts. This is different from some other languages, such as German, where the same word is used for operating all of those conveyances.
http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/upl...
But that doesn't make the comparison "shitty", it just means you need to do more than convincing people to cycle to get the advantages.