Drivers can fuck off. There are not minimum speeds in urban areas.
Is that how you prefer to live your life, in a constant war?
How about each side respect the other - cars give bikes space, and bikes move over for faster moving cars.
The central issue here is that it’s simply not safe to ride over to the side, being constantly passed by fast moving cars.
As demonstrated in more civilised places, it’s easy for cars and bikes to coexist if people just adopt a different attitude. And that is, essentially, that the drivers must drop their insane entitlement and realise that being stuck behind a slower moving vehicle for a 30 seconds (or even a couple of minutes!) will have almost no effect on their life.
Nearly everything we do has no near- or long-term effect. I'm a bicyclist, but also an organism whose time-distance feedback loop is jarred by a sudden obstructionist anomaly.
That's like asking, how is a motorist giving another motorist space, if he expects a motorist moving at 8 mph to pull over?
The faster motorist expects the slower one just to give up a portion of the space, for just a couple of seconds, to let them pass. Afterward, the slower one can have that space all to themselves until the cows come home, right?
"I need it for 3 seconds to get by; you can have it all day" is more than reasonable.
I don't understand where you're coming from. What if the cyclist comes to a complete halt and just stands there with the bike? Gee, how are you giving them space if you expect them to just stand off to the side and let other road users pass?
If the cyclist is not occupying an actual lane to themselves then they are constantly being passed too close by fast moving vehicles, and in danger of running into the suddenly-opening doors of parked cars or surprise pedestrians.
Seriously, if you go somewhere where drivers are respectful of cyclists you’ll see it’s just so easy for it all to work smoothly and safely. The impatience of drivers, at the expense of others safety, is astounding to me.
Also it should be noted that motorists give each other space for selfish reasons; they may damage their car or themselves if they collide with another car. If they hit a cyclist chances are they’ll kill or permanently maim the cyclist, but do little damage to their car, and so they have little reason to care. (!!!!!!)
Don't go down roads where it's impossible to pass you, unless you can do the speed limit there. Don't go down roads where there are parked cars, but only a small clearance between parked cars and traffic moving faster than you. Or any analogous situation: like small clearance between a concrete wall and traffic or whatever. Find roads where there aren't parked cars, or else where there is a generous space between the parking strip and traffic, so that you can avoid doors, and there is room to pass you. Where I live, many of the larger streets that have two lanes in each direction, and a solid car's width between parked cars and traffic. Someone opening a small door will not door you, and you have time to avoid a large door being swung fully open. You can also find roads where there is simply not much traffic, so you can have them all to yourself most of the time.
Drivers are not supposed to approach you closely when they pass; that's against the traffic code where I live, and likely in most places. A cyclist or motorcyclist must be passed as if they had an invisible car around them, so to speak. However, by straying farther into the lane, you're encouraging a reduction of the space between you and and the car that passes you anyway, which is counterproductive.
Parked cars are a menace, no doubt. In some countries, they don't allow street parking in cities. To register a car, you must prove that you have some place off the street to stash it when you're not driving it. North American cities should follow suit.
> little damage to their car, and so they have little reason to care
You're simply a lunatic with this remark. Most drivers are normal people, not psychopaths, and are absolutely terrified of the idea of injuring or killing a pedestrian or cyclist. That's still true even if some of their behaviors need improvement.
You say I’m a lunatic, but my experience and the scientific community research shows that drivers often don’t view cyclists as humans, nor do they accurately assess the risk of driving too close to (or even ramming or side swiping) cyclists. (You can find several papers on this, or just ask any cyclist.)
By the way, even if it’s only 1 in 100 drivers who hold this attitude, a cyclist encounters hundreds of drivers during a typical trip. Those are not good odds.
Cycling simply is not safe without investment in safe cycling infrastructure. It's a risk-taking activity like mountain climbing and skydiving.
The cyclist do a degree (perhaps an excessive one) relies on trust in the behavior of motor vehicles. The rest of it is up to the cyclist and their choices: which way to go, at what times, in what manner, helmet or not, mirrors or not, condition of bike, crappy rim brakes in wet weather or discs, etc.
Few of us here remember a world without cars; it's just a dream of the past. It's not realistic to return large urban areas to car-free status. At least not instantly. Cars are becoming electric, free of exhaust gases and engine noise. Thus certain arguments against keeping them out of cities are weakening.
It's also not realistic to just slow down traffic to match the slowest pedaler on every route; that is simply not a viable cycling safety plan. People have places to go. For most people, communting is pure overhead. They would rather be at their destination already doing something else.
More and more electrified bicycles are appearing. These can easily keep up with city traffic. They are changing/confusing driver perceptions of what a bicycle can do. Drivers are going to be less patient with motorless cyclists due to being accustomed to motorized cyclists. They will also make poor time/distance judgments due to the variation in capability. A driver who thinks he can pass a cyclist like the cyclist is standing still will miscalculate if that cyclist has a motor and is rapidly accelerating.
Electric bicycles are a threat to cyclists, and a threat which follows them right into safe cycling infrastructure. Just when you have escaped the cars and are pedaling away in a dedicated bicycle path, you're faced with marauding yahoos on what are de facto motorcycles, easily capable of going 50 km/h or more. Cycling infrastructure is still being planned for pedal bicycles, in terms of the dimensions of the lanes and whatnot. You need full roads, if the bicycles are motorized.