I'm speculating here, but I wonder if cargo is another factor. None of the early cycles had any obvious place for carrying anything. Regular people didn't have much reason to go anywhere by themselves. They lived at or near their workplace. Their social circles were small. Church happened once a week, if they attended that often. If you needed a vehicle, it wasn't to transport yourself, but to transport stuff.

I just read a couple of novels by Jane Austen. She describes the activities of the upper class, I believe in the 18th century. Now those people did transport themselves to visit other people, but her text makes it sound like a mile was a long journey -- if a woman walked that far by herself, it was talked about. Of course that doesn't tell us much about the lower classes.

Dickens sheds more light on the common people, at least in cities. Again, a person needed a reason to go further than their own neighborhood, and transportation in London seemed to have been seen as a service, rather than a product. If you rode in a cab, its technological drawbacks were someone else's problem.

Perhaps a reason to own and ride a bike would be if you worked in a factory that was some distance from where you lived, or for recreation. I've seen pictures of workers coming and going from factories, from early 20th century, and it's a sea of bikes.