There is one basic rule of traffic engineering: first come first served. It allows for vehicles of different speeds to share the road. Your responsibility as a driver of a vehicle is to not drive so fast that you can not possibly stop within your field of view (you are not driving a train), that is enough to share the road with bicycles, tractors, horses or whatever. Of course drivers of cars do not want to be bothered with that an want the road all for themselves, that's why you still insist in getting cyclists off the roads, at least where there is enough space to do so. The fear of cars is very convenient for this purpose.