We're their shadow selves. We're fitter, faster, leaner, younger, more likely to be in higher income brackets and to have higher education.
Every time a cyclist whips past a motorist, the motorist is potentially reminded of their failed resolutions to get fit, drive less, save the world, their annoyance at life and the "unfairness" of someone on a £250 machine going faster and having more fun than someone in a £20,000 machine.
Add the crappy cycle lanes that we sensibly don't use, the UK's deteriorating standards of public life and mutual respect, and the poisonous bile spread by Clarkson, Parris, Havers et al., and it's surprising we don't face more abuse.
Still, we will inherit the future, and I am looking forward to lines of cars rusting in peace as fuel becomes too rare to allow private motoring.