Bedlam? no no no.....
People go to bike shops to buy a road bike. Road bikes are lighter (which makes surprisingly little difference), and have a little less rolling resistance (which also makes surprisingly little difference, if you pump up tires) but their major advantage is in the rider position, especially torso lowering. Road bikes are, if they are to be faster, bikes which incorporate torso lowering. Aerodynamic drag of the riders body is about 60% the resistance that we are trying to overcome. It is difficult to get our legs out of the wind (unless we ride a recumbent, which are faster still than roadbikes), so dropping the torso is by far the biggest advantage of the traditional road bike. Bending elbows to get forearms out of the wind, and using narrower bars help but only a little.
In the past twenty years the pros and the bikes that bike shops like to sell, and our egos like to buy, that mimic the pros ride have become more like mountain bikes, with a more upright less aerodynamic riding position. This may be due to the fact perhaps that there are fewer breakaways these days in the pro peloton - which enormously reduces the effect of aerodynamics.The change in bicycle style may also be partly due to the type of bikes that bike shops can sell to overweight people.
Pros generally ride very highly, too highly, aerodynamic bikes (time trial bikes) when they are riding on their own. The features that time trial bikes have to allow solo riding pros to go fast, such as two sets of bars, very narrow bar spacing, and brakes separate from gear shifting make them unsuitable for most amateurs riding on roads with cars. Amateurs ride solo, but unfortunately it is almost impossible for them to mimic the pros' solo bikes.
As far as I know the pros do not change their bike when they intend to be part of a breakaway. Even in breakaways the pros tend to use an aero line where they take it in turns to go at the front. Quite amazingly to me in the recent national championships in the UK, Marc Cavendish seemed to be the only one of the four (?) in the lead breakaway that seemed to be concentrating on aerodynamics, partly by using a bike smaller that would ordinarily be offered to someone of his height at bike shop (he has in the past described his bike as a kids bike).
Amateurs are not given enough advice about the enormous effect of aerodynamics but are instead pointed towards the road bikes that the pros ride using the logic that as pros whose earnings depend on speed choose these bikes, these must be the fastest. This logic also promotes the sale of branded, sponsoring bikes which are considerably more expensive than unbranded bikes that might do the job just as well. But this advice is incorrect because the pros bikes are increasingly unaerodymic due to the increased dominance of the peloton.
The comfortable unaerodynamic bikes may allow more people to take up road bike riding, but for some people, (me at least) they prevent people from enjoying it. They are based on the bikes used by those riding in a group (which is a bike like riding behind a truck, or with a gale force tailwind) so for the lone rider, riding a comfortable bike is like dragging a parachute. It is like going to a racket shop and being offered a tennis racket to play badminton. The tennis racket has advantages (such as it is strong) and the Pro-road bike has advantages (such as it may be very light) but the tennis racket is not made for playing badminton and the Pro-road-bike is not made for solo riding.
As you can imagine, people equipped with devices unsuited to the recreation that they are taking up are more likely to give it up, less likely to really enjoy it, less likely to do it with vigour, and use calories and be exhilarated. This (as many other changes in our society) has negative impacts upon health and longevity.
I have become, via Nietsche, Shinto and Buddhism, a Christian in my old age, or I am tending that way. Christianity seems to be now to be really scientific in some ways at least, so I wonder if in fact everyone does die. But there is a road bike related part.
All over the world when people engage in religious activities they bow their heads and look down (Christian, Shinto and Buddhist prayer), in supplication, and prostration (Islam, Tibetan Buddhism) and get into traditional (but not recent) road bike position. I am unable to give the reason but I think that Dali does in his picture below. Please note that the apostles are in road bike position, that Jesus is pointing to himself, and to a torso floating in the air above. Then ride your bike long and low.
The apostles in road bike position