On the purpose of critical mass type rides - they don't necessarily make friends of some drivers, but they bring attention to the issue (lack of bike lanes, etc) which can eventually get local governments to act.
The meek do not, in fact, inherit the earth. That is a line fed by feudal lords to peasants who were to be kept down all their lives. Be a good little serf, and you'll get your reward eventually. And when you don't, there is this heaven thing. No, the serfs didn't start getting their share until they got assertive and rose up.
Similar dynamic for other groups and their protests. The civil rights movement provides many examples.
So, how does this relate to cyclists?. They pay for a lot of the roads, through their taxes - no, local roads are not built and maintained entirely with gas taxes, that is a myth as a little checking will show you. But when they ride on those roads, other people in two ton cars run them over, or threaten to, and won't tolerate the slightest inconvenience. What, you mean I shouldn't barrel around a blind curve at 50 mph, I actually have to adjust my speed to roadway visibility?. The outrage!
So how do cyclists get what they should get, which in some cases is just a four foot strip of road with a painted line, and in other cases is the ability to ride on the traffic lane as the law already explicitly entitles them to do? Being meek won't do it. Riding on the sidewalk won't do it. Staying off the road won't do it. Sometimes, they have to demonstrate - which includes the critical mass stuff.
There is a deadly intersection here in Portland. A six lane road, where drivers try to go 50 mph (posted 35 mph) and basically treat like an urban freeway. But this road goes through neighborhoods and on one particular intersection, there is a school and on the other side a park and the cross street is a frequently used one. Drivers blast through this intersection, regardless of kids or other cars or bikes trying to cross. The responsible road department refused to do anything to improve the signals or crosswalk. One day a young man on a bike was riding through the intersection and a pickup truck, whose driver was in a hurry to beat the light, turned left and ran him down and tore off his leg. This was just one of many bad accidents here over the years. But this time, cyclists and pedestrians staged demonstrations at this intersection. Large number of them walked and rode across the intersection, occupying the cross walks, blocking traffic for an hour during rush hour. Many drivers were boiling mad, of course. How dare people delay my already crappy commute? The next week, the mayor was at the intersection and the road department started installing new signals and markings, the work they'd refused to do for many years.
That's the point of demonstrations. They're not designed to make you, you drivers, happy or feel kindly toward cyclists.
As conditions get better for cyclists, there is less need for such demonstrations and thus critical mass type disobedience mostly fades away. That's the case in Portland. In some other cities, maybe they are still needed.
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