> For too long in the US we've designed our roads with the idea that cars have some right to the road that others do not.

This used to be the case too in Netherland. Until the 1990s, cars had right of way over bikes in most (not all) situations. A car coming from the left would have right of way over a bike coming from the right. This was only fixed in the 1990s.

Bikes have always been popular, but quite a lot of the things described in this article have been fairly recent developments.