If you read the rest of the thread, you’d find that my comments are based on actual experience on the road with pickup trucks, not just a couple news items. While not all P-U truck drivers do the coal-rolling thing, about 98% of coal rollers are driving pickups. And note it’s only full-size pickups. People driving smaller trucks don’t do it, nor do SUV drivers.
How about BMW drivers? 
In my experience, any driver can be an asshole. I got run off the road by a guy that had one of those “watch out for motorcycles!” bumper stickers. It wasn’t a pickup. I guess he didn’t think small cars needed the same vigilance?
That probably depends on where you are.
In farm country, a disproportionate number of people driving pickups are farmers. They’re less likely to be jacked up, though.
Believe it or not, not them. The 2% or so that aren’t pickups don’t really fall into any one category. Everything from motorcycles to Cadillacs.[*] But I can’t recall it ever being an expensive European sports sedan.
[*] Yes, I did once get coal-rolled by a Caddy. Surprised the hell out of me.
Something I read somewhere: “Every time you think you’re job is useless, take a moment and think about those poor workers in BMW factories installing turn signals.”
Very true. That’s why I said disproportionate not all.
It depends how you read the OP. I read “as a group” as meaning “on average” not as meaning that all pickup drivers are bad. I think if you choose not to read it that way you are probably more looking for a fight than reading for comprehension. I could be wrong.
IME not usually. Per my post above, my theory on this is that people driving more obviously “prestige” vehicles have more sources of status and don’t feel such a need to dump on people they perceive as lower down the pecking order.
I live in a “semi-rural” town that hasn’t really been “semi-rural” for 50 years. It’s pretty much straight up suburban, but residents who have moved in in the past generation are considerably more white collar and educated than the previous population, though there was a sort of existing “gentry” tracing their ancestry to prominent families of colonial times. There is an alliance of sorts between the “old money” people and the blue collar pickup driving crowd.
The whole cyclist vs motorist things in town has taken on a full blown political color. Asshole drivers who try to “spook” cyclists are folk heroes to the pickup driving set. The cops are pretty much fully aligned with the pickup drivers, who are often sporting Trump signs, thin blue line flags and sometimes even the stars and bars. They simply ignore any complaints by cyclists.
The cyclists are seen as the personification of Subaru driving liberal elitists who are changing the character of the town. Some of them are rumored to be schoolteachers! The BMW and Land Rover set are on the whole more sympathetic to the cyclists.
I am so borrowing that quote.
I’m calling BS on this. I have been driving full sized pickups for years. I am just an aware of bicyclists and others that have the right to be road as when I drive a small compact car. Does that comment mean everyone that drives a Dodge Challenger is going to drive it into a crowd like the guy in Virginia? Of course not. If we are going to group specific drivers to the way they drive, I want to call out all the idiots that drive small compact cars that think folks pulling travel trailers can stop on a dime. My wife and I counted at least 25 people that did this to us a few weeks ago while pulling our travel trailer. Twice I had to hit the brakes hard enough the trailer brakes locked up while on the freeway. Even though I am driving the speed limit with everyone else, there are those that have to save 2 second by racing to pass me then pull in front of me and get on the brakes. Seriously considering adding an air horn to my truck just for those idiots.
Cyclists keep telling you that we have more issues with big pickups than any other kind of vehicle.
In thousands of hours of biking I have had hundreds of incidents with asshole behavior from drivers. I have literally never had an incident where I WASNT blocking traffic but the driver decided to hurl some insult at me, hurl a can or bottle at me, or drive into the bike lane and honk, that wasn’t a pickup truck. Not a single one.
I’ve had lots of people yell at me, honk at me and pass me in an unsafe manner, in all kinds of cars when I was holding up traffic. But that’s different from people going out of their way to abuse cyclists.
No one is saying “All pickup truck drivers are assholes”. What they’re saying is that “More assholes drive full-sized lifted pickup trucks than drive other vehicles”. Bad stories are more memorable. You remember the 1 asshole; you don’t notice the 37 good, patient drivers. And if you see 5 assholes in pickups and only 2 in cars, you’re going to think that pickup drivers are assholes.
I try to watch out for bicycles and motorcycles. But, when a motorcycle uses the left turn lane to go straight around a bunch of people waiting for the light to turn green, it’s hard to feel for the “look for motorcycles” crowd. Bicycles have a right to be on the road, but when they’re driving between lanes to go around the cars at the stop light, they’re putting their own lives at risk. As a car driver, these are the stories I remember. As a bicyclist, I’m going to remember the “coal-roller”; I’m not going to remember the other 50 drivers that just went around.
I said above that it wasn’t every pickup driver that did this. But still a rather sizable percentage, maybe one out of every 5 or so. Compare that with the fraction of other kinds of vehicles, which would be one out of every few thousand.
My problem on going to the stereotyping, even when “statisticlly right” is that you open the door to other “statistically right” stereotypes. Also, once you fling them, you can’t un-fling them.
With the pick-up driver and the Pride parade, everywhere people jumped the gun “a homophobic Trump supporter murderer” and once the story becomes clear, the hatred doesn’t vanish. More people will keep the idea of the murderer rather than chel up the real story.
If you peddle with “pick-up drivers are bad drivers” then, “this ethinc group drives badly” or “this gender drives badly” is open to debate.
I wouldn’t put it that high. Maybe 99% of drivers are actually well behaved, and 95% of pickup drivers. Unfortunately that means that the majority of cyclist haters are pickup drivers.
Actually I have been lumping work vans (I don’t know what the proper term is) in with pickups. One of the most spectacular incidents I had was someone in a work van tossing a diaper at me. I called the painting company whose markings were on the van the next Monday. The response I got was “Bugger off, p******” a homophobic slur I haven’t heard in the US before delivered in a very distinctively Irish accent. I guess the owner was the driver.
Okay, fair point.
That might be the reason for our different estimates of the fraction. I only count actual full-sized pickups. Not SUVs, not vans, not small pickups. Another reason might be where we’re riding. In the city, the fraction is smaller, but I do a lot of riding out in the country and the fraction is higher out there. I’ve been on rides where the fraction is much higher, close to one out of two. Not often, admittedly, maybe only a couple-three times.
That deserves a negative Yelp review.
As a few of you said, I was doing 15 MPH down hill & caught up with these cyclists, which boggles the mind. I never expected to see them as they should have been in the next county by the time I got to where my pilot car encountered them. They had to be trying hard to mess with us.
When I go on bicycle rides with the teen aged grand-kids, I insist that we ride singe file. I also choose roads with less traffic. There are not a lot of bike paths around here, okay make that none.
Living out in the sticks is a big plus as these roads are easier to find. I also find that the ranchers & farmers share the road just fine, even with their semi & grain trucks. It is the city folks with their big SUVs & diesel pickups that can be a problem.
Note that as far as I know all diesel pickups are 3/4 ton or larger. So small to mid-sized pickups are almost all gas rigs.
Indeed it does. That is literally unbelievable.
Thing is when I’m riding I don’t treat pickups badly in any way that affects them. If I see one with the warning signs (aftermarket rims, vanity bars, lowered/raised, bonnet scoop, loud exhaust etc) I just keep more of an eye on it than usual.