You're still not zooming out and showing a large lack of empathy. I beg you to go to any cyclist thread on any platform and look at the lived experiences of cyclists vs drivers. Or just talk to some. Or try riding a bike through a city or suburb yourself to do things like get groceries and follow non-standard bike paths to actually do things. I'm not talking about riding a hidden off the road bike path, I mean commuting.
Car-centric infrastructure is violent and makes it so that the default affordance is towards the driver.
1. Turning right on red is dangerous for cyclists, yet legal for cars. 2. Bike lanes are unprotected and far too dangerous for the average commuter, forcing cyclists onto shitty sidewalks with obscured visibility. 3. Intersections and right of way laws in most states make it so cyclists must remain in a dangerous area (an intersection) for longer than is necessary with safe stop laws. 4. Automobiles have such diversity that many people cant even safely see cyclists if they were to follow the "rules of the road" because their visibility is so severely limited. Source : Me any time some asshole in a lifted truck pulls up next to me at a red light when I'm in the bike lane and his door handle is above my fucking head. 5. Bike paths are often obscured from cars until it's too late. Also drivers aren't checking bike paths when turning or approaching an intersection 6. Ever seen someone pull out of a gas station or parking lot? Zero percent chance they are checking the bike lane. Quick head turn to the left, see no cars, then full speed ahead. This is also caused by shitty infrastructure that puts cyclists in the blind spot.
You wanna license cyclists? Fine. I expect an equal amount of my tax money to go to bike-centric infrastructure then. I want to see new bike lanes being built instead of new 6 lane roads.
but it doesn't matter, all I ever see from people who haven't had to ride a bike or walk to work is the same ol "well ackshually bikes are dangerous too". And it's so fucking tone-deaf; and after a literally uncountable number of incidents where I've almost been killed, or I've been injured, or thrown from my bike, or cut off; I'm tired of pretending I'm not upset about it.
It's my lived experience where I have to either drive, or be in a stress induced hyper-vigilant ride for my fucking life every time I want to go to a store 4-5 miles away. I just can't imagine being wrapped in 2000 pounds of steel with airbag pillow cloud fucking crumple zone impact rated death machine, and pointing to 100 lbs of flesh on a 10lb aluminum frame and being like "No actually that's the problem and I'm so scared of them I need to make sure the entire world conforms to what I'm doing and leaves no room for them to interact with me"