In this country there seems to be an irrational hatred of people on bikes. I think it was something stoked up by the car industry to try and sell more cars. Now it seems deeply embedded in the national psyche that people on bikes are subhuman and fair game for attack.
No, the car industry is completely innocent of anything deliberate in this.
The origin was the sheer speed post WW2 with which the British public got away from cycling, switching to powered two wheels from the 1950s and into cars in the 1960s. By the 1970s utility cycling had virtually vanished, sport cycling was at a low ebb and British cycling mainly consisted of kids on Raleigh Choppers and the like. Huge numbers of bike shops had closed or fully converted to motorbikes and the like, including the one I worked in on leaving school, ever since being a Yamaha and Suzuki dealer.
At the same time in the 1960s and '70s we had major road improvement programs for motor vehicles like the new motorways, dual carriageways etc., leaving drivers in the dominant position of enjoying owning the roads.
It was only the introduction of the mountain bike in 1980 following its invention in the USA in 1979 that began a revival of adult British cycling. But of course even that was often off road so it was a long time before they started to make much impression on the roads. However, that return of cycling that was sporting in nature also led to the return of more club style cycling, also increasing the numbers of cyclists getting in the way of drivers on roads that had been solely theirs for a long time, creating resentment.
And then later to make matters even worse, the authorities started to paint cycle lanes on the roads, often stealing whole lanes from drivers or rendering them unusable with the ever increasing congestion.
The finishing touch for drivers to express fury was the fact that their remaining space was often packed to a standstill, while cycle lanes alongside commonly had few or no cyclists in them. Stand in drivers shoes for a little while and you'll soon understand how they feel.
The difference in mainland Europe is that they recovered from the war much more slowly in those early decades, so never reached the point of cycling dying out and drivers getting full control of their roads. For example, in the early 1970s when we'd reached that sad stage, almost half the Netherlands population were still cycling daily, enabling their government to learn from our mistake and start clamping down on drivers while making more space provision for cycling,
Lucky them, unlucky us because we can't turn the clock back now the damage is done.
.