I once went to a very good lecture by a Copenhagen bicycling advocate who was born and raised in Vancouver (I forgot his name - a pity, since most bike advocacy lectures repeat the same platitudes, and this guy actually had some profound things to say).
The message that resonated the most with me is when he said something like
"I want people to think of bicycle owners the same way they think about vacuum cleaner owners. That it's so engrained and unspecial; so untribal and mundane that you guys don't stick out like a political target. And just the same as you don't make friends with vacuum cleaner owners if you're a vacuum cleaner owner yourself, and you don't wear special clothes when you vacuum or go to special vacuum cleaner events, I want bicycling to become so mundane and everyday that it's detribalized and depoliticized. When that happens, we'll see real progress."
He said the hard part was right now, where you have to justify building better bike infrastructure that appears to cater to a niche group. But the long term effect of this is to bring reluctant cyclists into the fold, leading a much broader representation of the population and, in the process, making bicycling less special and less tribal.
Requiring bicyclists to wear helmets or high vis jackets or arm them to the teeth with safety features because we refuse to collectively invest in bike infrastructure is a move in the opposite direction. Rather than making bicycling more safe, you make it seem like a dangerous activity, basically confining bicycling to hard core road warriors, many of whom are going to flaunt the rules and behave badly, further tarnishing bicycling's reputation. You make bicycling more tribal, and this just leads to kneejerk reactions like "bicycling is just a bunch of young, white hipsters who run red lights".
