We usually say that the only thing that angers motorists more than cyclists breaking the rules of the road is cyclists following the rules of the road :)
The implication is that while they get angered by cyclists running reds, doing illegal turns, or lane splitting (assuming it's illegal), they also get angered if by following the rules the cyclists slow them down.
I am a daily cyclist and I started strictly following the rules after being scared by an accident I had. I realized eventually that I don't feel safer by following the rules. In fact there are a lot of days when I feel even more in danger than before (namely: rain days and friday nights).
I used to think that was because of the shock from the accident.
I'd like some material on that if you happen to know about it.
I'm a four season bike commuter too (boosted board when it's hot out). I'm done following the rules of the road just because— I'll do what's safest for me. If the police want people outside of cars to follow the rules "for our safety", they need to make the first move and actually enforce the car-side rules that would help make us safer as well.
The big one in Ontario is yielding to crosswalks. As of September last year, failing to yield to a crosswalk is supposed to be $1000 (!) fine. But as far as I know, there hasn't been one single instance of that ticket being handed out in my city, yet I witness pedestrians cut off by vehicles literally daily. I've even posted helmet cam videos of it happening to Facebook and YouTube and tagged my local politicians. Nothing happens.
The "Idaho stop" [1] is the best example I know of, with some studies showing that it's safer than the alternative. It's where cyclists are allowed to treat stop signs as yields (as opposed to coming to a full stop at each one).
Yes I've heard of that through the Paris experiment cited in this article. Although when I talked about it with Parisian friends :
* Cyclists have not heard of it and keep getting insulted daily for behaviors allowed by this experiment
* Motorist had the typical knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "This is crazy! Cyclists are madmen! Actual dangers to pedestrians and to themselves, ..." yadda yadda
Of course I don't assume that every cyclist I talked with is respectful of the actual crossroads where this is enforced so my little biased survey is worth nothing.
But I guess if it's not backed up with proper propaganda this kind of new road rules are doomed to create new tensions between cyclists and motorist.
Or just give cyclists proper protected bike lanes, like there have in the Netherlands. But I kind of have lost hope on the French Government and Community Governments for that.
The implication is that while they get angered by cyclists running reds, doing illegal turns, or lane splitting (assuming it's illegal), they also get angered if by following the rules the cyclists slow them down.