This isn't solely a Toronto story, but certainly worth pointing out to local readers: Slate has an article explaining why drivers think all cyclists are horrible, despite considerable evidence. The answer, as you might guess, is that all of our brains are wired badly:
Your estimate of the number of asshole cyclists and the degree of their assholery is skewed by what behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman call the affect heuristic, which is a fancy way of saying that people make judgments by consulting their emotions instead of logic....
If you are a city driver, you have undoubtedly been scared half to death by some maniac cutting across traffic like Frogger on a fixie. Such emotionally charged events stand out in our associative memory far more than mundane events, like a cyclist riding peacefully alongside your vehicle. The affect heuristic is compounded by the idea of negativity dominance—bad events stand out more than good ones. This causes you to overestimate both the amount and the severity of upsetting events, like almost getting some dirty hipster’s blood on your windshield.
Note: this is also why cyclists think all drivers are actually trying to kill them. And why both parties hate cab drivers.
Admittedly, there are places where the conflicts between cyclists, pedestrians and drivers seem pretty terrible. This video is from New York City: