> They at least respect lanes as drawn on the road.

Sometimes anyway. It’s ignoring lanes when making a turn (e.g. drift out on a multi-lane turn) is sadly common.

Not to mention failing to stop at the clearly marked lines at intersections. They seem to stop either a car length behind the line or a car length over the line in the crosswalk.

Also relax to both, cutting corners (literally) when making turns, american drivers seem to have real problem with tight turns. One reason why it’s risky to stop over the line incidentally, as a car making a shallow turn is very likely to step into your lane if they don’t take an over-wide turn instead.

Taking a school trip to Tunisia was a huge eye-opener how liberally people can interpret driving rules. Think of: tourist bus driving on the wrong side on the road to avoid traffic. On a highway, exiting from the left-most lane without signalling etc. Interestingly, they told us that this is still nothing compared to how it is in southern Tunisia - Sfax. I don't really want to go there, I value my life too much.

But they're too dumb to understand the passing lane.

These are not necessarily the same thing. In Indonesia, people completely ignore lanes, and instead fit cars and other vehicles into the available space as if it's a tetris game. But they have a lot of mopeds and surprisingly few accidents, because when it's that crowded, they go slow.

It's terrifying for a foreigner, though.

I mean, I've seen plenty of jackass drivers threatening or acting aggressively to cyclists in Europe. Even the Netherlands, of all places.

The biggest difference is there are more protective laws / dedicated bike lanes and the critical mass of cyclists means you might be swatting at a bee swarm.

Interestingly in Spain cyclists are well-protected and ordinary drivers who otherwise might drive pretty unsafely, take care of them. Coming from a different place it's so weird to experience someone driving 35 km/h behind a cyclist on a country road because there is a solid white line and a "no overtake" sign. Even if they do overtake (legally) they always keep at least 1.5 meters. There was a huge awareness campaign about this and it is working.

Is that true? 30 years ago I heard that Spain was notoriously unsafe for cyclists and some car drivers might intentionally endanger or hit cyclists in ways we now hear from the US. If that was true then, and now the attitude in Spain has changed so much, I dare say there's hope for the US as well.

The law protects the cyclist but he/she has much more skin on the game. There are still accidents resulting in deaths and not all find the culprit car.

Note that in Spain it is legal to cross the solid white line to take over a cyclist.

Sure, It is sometimes annoying but having more cars would also created more traffic.

For some reason in Australia this got picked up by the media who made a small culture-war type conflict of cars vs cyclists. It's now open season on cyclists by car drivers (and very occasionally the other way around) - every regular cyclist has a tale to tell of car drivers being openly aggressive (I had a beer bottle thrown at my head by a passing car - luckily his aim was as bad as his judgement).

My sister moved to the US for her husband to study there, he was murdered by a NY city garbage truck white riding a bicycle last year.

Apparently this is not uncommon, almost routine. The driver ran off, and the next day another person - not the real driver - turned himself in to the police. Apparently the Mafia has sone exchange program with the garbage companies, they do each other favors. Somebody will now sit in prison for decades, for a murder the detective knows he did not commit, apparently to repay some debt. And my brother-in-law's murderer is still driving garbage trucks on roads with cyclists.

Why would the mafia use a garbage truck to murder someone?

He was not targeting by the Mafia. Rather, he was riding a bicycle and a garbage truck served into his lane, running him over, then sped off.

I have been told that these NY garbage trucks _often_ intimidate cyclists. They are known for reckless driving and accidents. In any case, there are two reasons that the police are treating this as murder. One of the reasons is that the driver left the scene. I forget the second reason.