Do drivers hate bicyclists? US sees an alarming rash of crashes.

Bicyclists and drivers have a long, fraught history in the United States, and spring 2026 shows that sharing the road still isn’t going so well. 

In Florida, court records show a man was charged with attempted murder and other counts in March after police said he fired a gun from his pickup truck at a group of boys riding bikes in the street, striking one in the leg. 

In Southern California, a driver was charged after video showed a blue BMW tailgated bikers riding in a bike lane in Newport Beach – forcing one cyclist to jump onto a curb to avoid being hit on March 21. 

And a man in Georgia was charged with aggravated assault, reckless driving and other counts after allegedly hitting a group of cyclists with his SUV in April, reported WSB-TV.  

“People have the opinion that cyclists don’t have the right to use the public roads,” said Maggie Ardito, who advocates for greater safety for cyclists as president of the St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop Alliance and as a board member of the Florida Bicycle Association. 

Ardito says the sight of a group of cyclists can enrage drivers, and – in Ardito’s experience as a cyclist and a leader of the biking community in Florida – it’s been happening more and more.  

Meanwhile, not all crashes involving bikes and cars are attributed to the vehicle driver’s behavior. One crash in DeLand, Florida, in 2025, happened when a bicyclist ran a stop sign, reported the Daytona Beach News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, citing Florida Highway Patrol. A 38-year-old cyclist was killed in that incident. 

In an extreme example in February, police in Santa Ana, California, said a man threw a bicycle at a car in traffic, damaging its hood.

Data shows a concerning trend: Recent years have seen a sharp increase in bicyclist fatalities among men over the age of 20, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute. Deaths have increased 15% since 1975, and 86% since an all-time low point in 2010. Meanwhile, fatalities have decreased for children. In 2024, 1,103 bicyclists died in traffic crashes, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data shows. 

So what’s going on? And why are drivers and bicyclists seemingly always at odds? 

Why are there so many bike and car incidents?

For years, road engineers widened streets to allow for a forecast increase in traffic congestion, said Leigh Ann Von Hagen, the executive director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. But wider roads are also an invitation for faster car speeds, Von Hagen said. Since the pandemic began, overall speeds have increased, along with reckless driving, she said. 

There are also more cyclists on the road these days. A PeopleForBikes study found more Americans rode in 2024 than at any time in the previous decade. And after a sudden drop-off of driving congestion at the start of the pandemic, traffic has mostly rebounded. With more bikes and vehicles sharing the road, there are more chances for heated and at times deadly encounters. 

“People are adopting bicycling more – which is healthy and helps the environment and helps us get to lower energy costs, and it's a lot less expensive to ride your bike today than it is to fill your gas tank – yet we really haven't created actual facilities for people to bicycle in,” Von Hagen said. 

The documented deaths don’t represent all bike-car collisions. There’s no one source to compile data on such collisions nationwide, especially considering cases that don’t lead to death or serious injury, or instances of conflict or road rage that don’t include a crash, Von Hagen said. 

The NHTSA data shows there have been increases in bicycle fatalities in traffic crashes since the start of the COVID pandemic. Pedestrian fatalities have also increased, said Hannah Younes, a senior research specialist at the Rutgers transportation center.

Road rage can go both ways

Motor vehicle drivers can become angry at bike riders when they feel the cyclists have breached their expectations on the road, Dwight Hennessy, chair and professor of psychology at Buffalo State University, said.

Bikes are inherently much slower than cars, and car drivers are inclined to go as fast as the road conditions will allow. While car drivers may see bikes as in their way, bicyclists are concerned for their safety and may regard drivers getting too close as "driving like a maniac on the road and not paying attention to me," he said.

“I don't think either side really thinks about the other’s perspective,” Hennessy, who specializes in the psychology of traffic and road rage, told USA TODAY. 

People who are more prone to road rage are more easily triggered than others by their experiences on the road, and may tend to perceive incidents (whether accidental or not) as personal slights, Hennessy said. Bikers can be just as guilty of aggressive behavior or dangerous driving, said Hennessy, who is a frequent cyclist himself. 

“There are some cyclists who are antagonistic toward drivers,” he said. A cyclist might think a driver is coming up too close to them "because they’re a jerk,” he said. “In their mind, ‘How do you deal with a jerk? Well, you just piss them off even more, maybe you teach them a lesson.’” 

Bicyclists are more vulnerable to serious injury or death

A group of bicyclists was riding together in DeLand, Florida, when a pickup truck came unexpectedly into their lane, plowing them down and injuring multiple riders on May 9. 

The state’s highway patrol said in a report that the driver of the 2015 Chevy Silverado involved in the crash was “asleep or fatigued” at the wheel. Local station WESH published footage showing the truck was coming toward the cyclists from the opposite direction. 

The Silverado hit at least seven cyclists of the group of 13, the report said. It also nearly hit an SUV, according to reporting from the Daytona Beach News-Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. Three of the riders were seriously injured, according to news reports, including Ryan Flesch, who is a beloved manager at JC’s Bike Shop in DeLand.

Ardito is a close friend of Flesch's. Photos of the crash aftermath shared on social media and by local news outlets showed several damaged bikes and riders lying on the ground. 

Flesch sustained a broken ankle and severely injured fingers on one hand. It’s not clear whether he’ll regain full function of his hand, a potentially devastating injury for his profession, Ardito said. 

“This should not have happened to him,” she said.

The group was following traffic laws and riding cautiously, but cyclists are much more vulnerable to injury or death out in the open compared to a driver of a vehicle; even the most cautious bike riders are at risk, Ardito said. 

Ardito said inattentive or distracted drivers are a serious hazard for cyclists trying to share the road, regardless of whether there are bike lanes. Drivers distracted on cellphones are prone to drift into a bike lane, a problem she said is on the rise. 

One of the most dangerous places for a bicyclist is at an intersection, where turning vehicles pose an extra hazard when they don’t check for cyclists coming, Younes and Von Hagen said. 

There are situations where even in the presence of a dedicated bike lane, unless it is protected by barriers, it may still be safest for a cyclist to ride in the road, Von Hagen said. Bike lanes can be risky if they are too narrow, and it’s all too easy for a car to drift or swipe a rider with a side mirror, she said. Bike lanes tend to be where people illegally park, or where garbage cans or accumulating fall leaves pile up. 

The team at Rutgers studied driver and cyclist behavior before and after the implementation of a temporary bike lane in New Jersey. Men are generally more likely than women to ride in the street, while women are more likely to ride on the sidewalk, Younes said. When there is a protected lane, with physical barriers or a parking lane between a bike lane and car traffic, use is more universal, and people who are more risk-averse will use it instead of the sidewalk, Younes said. 

States and jurisdictions have varying laws on where bicyclists should ride, but in general, car drivers are required to “share the road” with bicyclists and motorcyclists. Most states (35 and Washington, DC, as of 2021) require car drivers to leave at least 3 feet of space when passing a bike. 

Ardito, who is retired, said she is hypervigilant about safety while cycling and wears high-visibility gear. But she still chooses to get around by bike as much as she can, and deliberately moved to a neighborhood where she could access most of her essentials that way. When she and her husband go on vacation, they try to visit bike-friendly places like the Netherlands.

She hopes to educate drivers that cyclists have just as much right to the road as cars, while also informing cyclists how to safely ride and obey all the rules. 

“Recognize that everybody is important to somebody,” Ardito said in a message to drivers.