[7952]

Only a tiny majority of drivers will ever wilfully put cyclists at risk. Most people will genuinely believe that they are good drivers and nice people because that is exactly how everyone they know also behaves. There is simply no strong social pressure to be careful beyond a basic minimum standards. Cyclists are seen as breaking a basic social convention.

But as a cyclist, you realise how basically selfish people are and how unfair traffic accidents are. Motorists have an unrealistic idea of "fairness" and would feel that excessive penalties would be "unfair" when they made an honest mistake that is commonly made.

Personally I think that the penalties of bad driving should match the unfairness of the effects. Do not punish 99% of people who get a ticket. The other 1% are picked at random and get a very large fine (say $10,000).

[malandrew]

Every driver on his cellphone or sending text messages is willfully putting cyclists at risk. Considering how common both those scenarios are, I would say that many if not the majority of drivers put cyclists (and pedestrians, other drivers and themselves) at risk on a regular basis.