Actual statistics about encounters clearly do show it is less dangerous, and expecting a concussion to be a false interpretion of actual risks. I do get your problem though: you're not used to it. You need eyes everywhere which essentially takes training.
For example they will be ready to crash on a pedestrian who is walking on a bike lane for good reason (most common ones are: an excavator made a trench on the sidewalk, the snow clearing machine took all the snow from the road and made a mountain on the sidewalk).
However when there is no bike lane available, they will have no problem in going on the sidewalk at 50km/h with their electric motor. Despite this being clearly forbidden.
And getting hit by an electric bike going 50 is no joke. You don't just get a bruise and move on with your day.
The classification in turn determines which laws the seller and driver is under. A bicycle doesn't require a driving license or license plate. Mopeds and motorcycles require a license plate (registered) and have corresponding driving licenses. There might also be different taxes involved.
There is a similar classification with four wheel vehicles. There is electric four wheel mopeds, tractors and cars, each defined by the maximum speed. You can even convert a car into a moped or tractor by changing the gear box to limit how fast they can go.
That being said, I do have the impression in the local town (but definitely not everywhere) the behavior of cyclists in general became worse in the last decades. I'd really wish I had a way to make sure, but I just don't remember seeing multiple highest category rule violations every single day.
The average speed of a bike, as measured in Netherlands, is around 15km/h. When there is snow the speed is generally even lower. It is also fairly common where I live to see parents use strollers on snowy days since the bike roads tend to be clear of snow before sidewalk. No one, neither police or other pedestrians, acts as if those parents are putting their children at mortal danger. Statistics also support this.
A motorized two wheeler that can travel 50 km/h is not a bicycle, it is a moped. If its electrical then its an electric moped. Mopeds are not allowed where I live to use bike lanes unless they travel at the maximum speed of bikes. Mopeds also require a moped driving license and a license plate, and police can and has apprehended people who break the traffic law in this way.
> Mopeds are not allowed where I live to use bike lane
Welcome to Sweden I guess… I think they are not allowed but they don't care. Electric or benzin engine alike.
I would slightly agree that parents that train their kids on training wheels should maybe select a better place than a trafficked bike lane, but I for one is not going to stop them and tell them how to raise their kids. I would definitively not call the police and social service. I would be much more concern seeing the same behavior on the road, and if they were on the highway I would consider it.
> I think they are not allowed but they don't care. Electric or benzin engine alike.
Mopedists are what they are, or rather young adults without a driving license will behave like they always have. Motorized teens. Of course some of them will break the law. Modified electric bikes are however fairly rare since moped strength engines are generally more expensive, and if you are paying that much already then the moped license is fairly cheap to get. Modified mopeds however that goes faster than 45 km/h are very common, especially the four-wheel ones. The legal age to get a driving license is 18 so there is also a incentive to break the law for those that are around 15-18.
As a pedestrian, I had few super close calls (5cm max) where a crowd of us pedestrians were going through the road on green light and cyclist zoomed at 30-40kph through cars on red light and our crowd, not even attempting to break. At that speed, crash can be fatal/disabling for both. Its not just theoretical - when my wife worked as doctor on biggest urgence here, they had a case where 40 year old guy was hit in same way by cyclist on pedestrian crossing, green light. He went into coma and died in 2 days. Red light is just invisible to most, unlike rest of traffic. As pedestrian I consider cars and motorbikes/scooters OK, but cyclists I avoid / look out for very carefully, especially when with kids.
They really act like everything belongs to them and they are above any constraints, be it red light, no-bike-parks for kids etc. You can't simply cross road because you as pedestrian have green light - you need to have green light and check that no cyclist is going through the town like its some post-apocalyptic wasteland with no humans around.
They are aggressive to the car drivers too - I had cases where drink cyclists were trying to damage my car by kicking into it (I was stopped on red light so no threat to anybody, no idea why). Damage to well parked car, also by cyclists. No love there despite obvious ecological benefits.
With that said, people do stupid things there are always outliers.
How did I make any cyclist unhappy by just standing still with my car on red light in a row of other cars?
How did I insult cyclists by daring to cross on green light as pedestrian?
I don't talk about outliers, I talk about daily experience for past 10 years I live here. Consistently the same. As with cars, you don't notice normal drivers/riders, but a-holes you notice well. And a-holes on bikes I do notice practically every single day, unlike any other traffic on the roads which respects basic traffic rules.
Crazy stuff happens in traffic for sure, but when someone is angry with you it is mostly because you have done something. The cases of random deliberate violence are so rare that they should not happen to you.
If you want to live a life were you assume the worst about a completly heterogeneous group of people consisting of people from all walks of life and state of mind, that represents "people", you are free to make that choice but do not blme cyclists for that. This is my point: you might feel innocent all the time, but what you do is also interpreted by others they might feel the same thing.
Again I do not really talk about you or your specific experience but in general, and what should be true for longer period of times. What you feel and experience is up to you, can't change that.
This seems to be a persistent myth. All the studies I've come across say the exact opposite; for example:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...
Imagine 16% drivers not stopping on red.
in 2017 over 900 americans died in accidents involving running a red light
https://newsroom.aaa.com/2019/08/red-light-running-deaths-hi...
One safe assumption is that the number of drivers killed by bikers running red lights is near 0.
Motorists exceed the speed limit, roll through stop signs, sometimes blow through red lights (every light cycle at one intersection on my daily commute), and drive while distracted (I see the cell phones from my bike).
Cyclists blow through stop signs, sometimes blow red lights, and often take shortcuts that are technically illegal.
I can promise you that every biker care. If nothing else, then at least for their own safety. And in the 35 years I've been biking around here, I've never seen a collision between someone stepping out of a bus and a bike coming from behind.
The city is badly designed. Busses shouldn't stop on traffic.