A strange conversation so far, but these citations are useful. I'd also recommend my colleague Zack Furness' book *One Less Car* which traces some of the early ways bike culture shaped car culture (as shag has helpfully outlined in her earlier post) but also looks at the bike activism movements in the last century in a very nuanced way. The stuff in the early chapters about gender would be right up your alley - though maybe you're already hip to it. Anxieties about their freedom of movement were couched in critiques of the bike and the onanistic pleasures it (and especially it's seat) might provide to women as they moved independently away from the patriarchal home. Good stuff.
I don't know how to respond to the contrarian bullshit about how car drivers are stupid or they should be taunted for their loyalty to these admittedly dangerous behemoths. I generally agree with Woj's statement that we should generally reduce their use, but living in Texas I can say that this is much easier said than done. Though I live in Austin, where the hipster cult remains strong, with their fixies and stupid, fashion conscious resistance to helmets, the bike lanes and paths here are laughable - usually just out of the way residential streets that take you the longest possible route to keep you off the more dangerous thoroughfares where they can't be bothered to even install decent sidewalks for the disabled, much less a good route for bikes. The buses are decent, but the single train they have in town is quite literally a joke - a tiny two car number that rolls up and down a track that it shares with an old freight line. And this took them several years to work out. Dallas has a surprisingly large system, but it is brand new and will require a lot of support to catch on - right now, they are raising the fares which will likely make it a hard sell to people enculturated on the "freedom and convenience" of the car. Unless we see some more accurate pricing of the cost of gas (e.g. taxing for carbon emissions) it will be a slow transfer.
Likewise, the transformation of consciousness around bikes will likely take time and struggle. Chicago has had some success, but only in creating the kinds of second rate, shared lane bike routes that, despite being easy to install are hard to pass politically. They are also difficult to navigate as a driver: after moving there, I had several near misses before I trained myself to remember that there was a lane over there to look out for when turning, parallel parking, or opening my door after parking.
As a driver on those busy streets (and especially going through the three road intersections common to that city) it is hard to watch for all of the possible obstacles - peds, bikers, and cars - and unfortunately the things that are most dangerous are other cars so that's what you look out for first. I do this as a driver of a car, as a bike rider, and as a ped. I was run over in Virgina riding my bike (wouldn't be typing this today had I not had a helmet - the rear tire of the car went right over my head) and I'm sorry to say it was my fault: I didn't see the light change and wasn't able to stop fast enough before entering the intersection. I felt very bad for the nurse who hit me, but since it didn't seem to bother her after the fact, I'll let that go. Since then, whenever I am riding across an intersection, even if I have the light, I try to make eye contact with car drivers and will usually not cross if I am not sure they see me. This I do whether I'm walking or cycling - and it is clear when I'm in a place where drivers have generally no idea that other people do these things and thus don't factor them into their decision-making process. Does this make them evil? Stupid? Worthy of taunting or ridicule? Maybe. But I think it's more of an educational problem which is best handled by a mutual respect for the problems the environment creates for the machines both of us are operating.
I don't think there are many people who would purposefully run over a biker or ped - and if they did, I don't think it would be because they are alienated by their cars or reminded of their vulnerability: It would be because they are sociopaths. In some people's minds "sociopaths" might be synonymous with drivers, but that's a hard sell for me since most spaces and cultures in the US thoroughly socialize us to desire and believe in driving as a mode of transportation. Criticizing people for driving in this regard is like criticizing people for performing wage labor in the capitalist system: it's a sanctimonious sport best played in the abstract. When real concrete people have to buy a car to drive to work and drive to work to pay for the car telling them they are worthless cretins isn't going to make the revolution come any faster.
On the other hand, I do agree that, like any activity, driving a car, taking a bus or train, and riding a bike all constitute a particular kind of subjectivity and relationship with others and the self. Again, nothing too revelatory here. If nothing else, it is useful to see what that experience is like so you can test it out. I ride my bike to some places, but it doesn't take long till you feel like mounting the pedals is like going to war. I've developed a few good routes to some commonly traveled places, but sometimes the sheer distance between things is just ridiculous to attempt on a bike, particularly when it will involve crossing major highways or riding alongside busy roads. Add to this the fact that about 6 months of the year it is over 90 degrees here and it is clear why most of the bike riders here are younger people doing it as a statement or older people doing it for recreation: if you had to rely on it to get to work a good deal of your day would be lost and you'd end up at work sweating like you just ran a marathon. Winter biking in Chicago isn't a whole lot better - particularly when you have to navigate piles of snow and ice or frothy puddles of melt and filth. On those days it's better to take public transport, but that's much easier in a place like Chicago where such a thing exists in practice rather than just as a casual suggestion. I'd also assume buses pose as great a risk to cyclists and peds as cars, if not more so.
I don't debate that "car culture" has its horrors - not least of which are the bubble mentality that goes alongside the single family home and the suburban exclusion of the Other - but noting that there are deep material and social constraints upholding this ideological system is not the same thing as celebrating it as a populist good: it is to sympathize with the difficulty people have in thinking outside of those systems, not just because there is propaganda supporting them but because material life makes that ideology seem most rational. I think Woj's comparison with southern slavery is a provocative one precisely because there are serious material interests everyone has in preserving the system as is: moreso even.
IIRC, at the height of US slavery, there was still a significant majority who owned no slaves yet still supported the system. In contrast, many people in the US (and in other countries) have struggled for many years to acquire this piece of capital - an investment that would be completely devalued were we to make any sort of wholesale shift to public transport or, to point to the more pressing issue of climate change, some non carbon emitting form of transportation. Like all of our retirement accounts which rely on the titans of finance to stay solvent into our old age, the investment in this system is widespread and individualized. This was, it's worth noting, part of the design.
If, therefore, people seem resistant to changing it or defensive about attacks upon it, that is hardly unusual, as any good materialist should understand. You can make moralistic claims about drivers being evil, baseless speculation about them being stupid, and playful recommendations that they should be taunted for their insipidity. But none of this will do anything to change or even highlight the actual system that makes them evil, stupid, or insipid. There are much more constructive forms of organizing and activism around these issues - many people who already basically agree with the problems discussed here, but who are aware that transforming a hegemonic system is a process that involves more than sniping and acting like an entitled prick when you cross the road texting or cut across traffic biking. These activities are as dangerous and irresponsible as driving drunk - or at least they are on that continuum - and thinking of them as a form of protest that should force drivers into awareness is just plain dumb. It won't change the system and it might get you or someone else killed.