A pal of mine – a benign, good-tempered, live-and-let-live sort of person – turns unexpectedly irate at just the thought, believe it or not, of bicyclists.

"They make me crazy," she says with uncharacteristic vehemence. "They're obnoxious."

It's an odd fixation, as if someone took an unaccountable dislike to canoeists or bowlers or people who collect Hummel figurines. What is there about pedaling a bicycle that can give offense?

Not a darn thing, say serious cyclists, who have plenty to add about road-hog, motor-centric drivers who don't want to share the road.

A Page One story on Saturday cited seven Dallas-Fort Worth cyclists injured or killed in collisions with cars in a single week. And a national cycling magazine recently rated Dallas as a cyclist-unfriendly city.

Me, I use a stationary bike at the gym, where it's air-conditioned and I can crank up the music. I certainly don't get mad when I see cyclists in their sleek spandex getups and wraparound shades on their weightless titanium-frame Euro-bikes. I just don't think it looks like much fun. Different spokes, I guess.

Yet the whole cyclist-driver issue seems, for a lot of people, to be a hot-temper flashpoint. And it will only get worse as more cyclists hit our already crowded streets.

On one side are the cyclists, who share a justifiable concern for their safety and well-being. They point out that they have the same right to use the public roadways as motor vehicles.

On the other are those like my friend, who lives in a scenic, semi-rural area served mostly by two-lane roads. Packs of defiant cyclists, perhaps emboldened by numbers, make weekend driving particularly difficult, she says: They'll ride two abreast, blocking the only available lane and forcing traffic to crawl behind them.

"There's a lot of friction out there," said Robert Wade, an Irving engineer and avid cyclist who writes his own blog, www.cyclejockey.com. "It's really a battle, and it's just getting worse."

Mr. Wade said he believes drivers – and even the occasional police officer – need to be schooled in the law, which gives bicyclists the same access to the road as cars, and which allows them to ride abreast as long as the flow of traffic isn't impeded.

Yet Mr. Wade, interestingly, says cyclists frequently bring problems on themselves through their own defiance.

"I feel like they create a lot of their own problems," he said. "They need to follow the rules."

Drivers probably don't realize that cyclists don't always like riding close to the right-hand curb: Not only is it dangerous when clueless drivers try to squeeze by, but the roadside is often littered with potentially hazardous debris and glass.

Yet cyclists shouldn't expect a car to patiently follow a pack of 18-mph cyclists up a four-mile stretch of two-lane road, he said. Not only is it inconsiderate, it creates ill will toward the sport he loves.

"That's where we need to 'single up,' " he said. "If you're in a hurry and you've got 15 cyclists blocking the road, it's going to make you mad."

Mr. Wade has heard plenty of horror stories – he has a few himself – of dumb, dangerous drivers honking, shooting the finger, even throwing cans and trash at cyclists on the road.

But he also has the good sense to recognize that there's fault on both sides and that cyclists do themselves no favors by making a stubborn show of treating public streets like private bike paths.

There are plenty of proposals to fix this culture clash: more miles of dedicated bike lanes, stiffer laws requiring motorists to give cyclists wide clearance.

Mr. Wade, however, takes the wise view that the first step is for both sides to cede a little moral high ground. Rights, rules and laws are important. Safety is paramount.

But polite needs to be part of the equation, Mr. Wade said. "Etiquette is a big thing, too."