I totally feel you on enjoying biking way more. Biking around feels so much more human to me than cars ever will because you can like, see people’s faces. I only need to see a face once or twice for it to be recognizable, but I could definitely sit in traffic and next to the same person in the same Honda civic every day while commuting and never realize. Cars just put so much space, separation, and obstruction between people.

I still have less-than-ideal interactions with pedestrians in high traffic times- our pedestrian/bike infrastructure is mixed and fairly imperfect, and often I get funneled into tight spaces and people on foot tend to do unpredictable things. In cars, when drivers do things that annoy or endanger each other, it’s always horns and middle fingers and road rage behaviors. But on a bike, you can talk to each other. On your left, coming through, excuse me, sorry. I’ve had a lot of interactions where pedestrians say sorry to me as I pass and they realize they were in a weird spot, and I have a chance to holler back that it’s okay, no worries as a ride off.

I’ve also noticed that with other bikers, we have a mutual understanding of how to move out of each others way and navigate the pedestrians/obstacles around us, just through body language and facial expressions. It is so much easier to be nice and considerate and communicative on a bike.