[atoav]

I am a cycle commuter since I am ~10. I grew up on the countryside and because my parents couldn't bring me to school every day and the walking distance to the next bus stop was too far I ended up taking the bike every day and it sort of became a habit. Now I live in a city where I take the bike because on my daily route it is ~10 minutes faster than the metro.

A few points: You mentioned that cyclists make you nervous, which I understand. When I drive the car, I am watching for cyclists too. But because I am cycling I know very well what to watch for – and to be honest, if some suicidal lunatic shows up in the wrong moment, there is nothing you can do except checking carefully anyways. This is a problem of the cities, where many cyclists are people without a drivers license, and they behave as such. Beeing in traffic is about communicating, and it is hard to communicate if you don't even know if there is somebody to communicate with.

So the problem is exactly where cyclists and motorists intersect. Because cyclists often cannot put themselves into a motorists mind and vice versa.

One solutions that doesn't involve educating either side is building infrastructure that makes the intersecting spaces of cyclists and motorists as controlled and perceptually simple as possible. If you ever had the chance to drive a car and a bike in Denmark or the Netherlands, you will notice how less stressful it is to move in public, because they really put thought into lifting that stress from the users of the infrastructure. This means investing into cycling infrastructure is good, as long as you see the whole thing and not just slap some bicycle lane somewhere besides a parking street. If this is done right, everybody can benefit, especially from less cognitive overload.