TC1

And for some mysterious reason, cyclists love to promote the idea that cycling is dangerous -- when it is actually not, at all, and when doing so is actively deleterious to that safety.

For the same reason that humans put motors on almost literally everything, laziness.

That sounds harsh, but it's true -- and laziness is not necessarily bad. Human beings' inherent laziness is exactly the trait that has led us to develop, well, almost everything that we call 'progress' -- from elevators, to washing machines, to airplanes, to computers. We could have continued chasing down prey and clubbing them with sticks -- but that's hard, so we developed traps, and bows, and guns. We could have continued foraging around for anything edible, but it turns out that if you plant food in a known location, you can sit on your duff for eight months while it grows.

All that said, from talking to a couple bike shop owners that I'm acquainted with, they all say that in the US, one won't be able to buy a motor-free bike in a shop within ten years. They can't sell them now, and no one will even try soon. LBS inventory will be electric only, and anyone who wants a traditional bike will have to order it D2C -- probably from a small group of manufacturers who continue to build them. Except for the enthusiasts on forums like this, no one else wants anything to do with powering their own vehicle, and there are probably not enough of 'us' to support profitable business models.