What those cyclists do is they are getting extremely good at predicting movement of cars and pedestrians and finding a collision-free path. Bikes (both motor an

What those cyclists do is they are getting extremely good at predicting movement of cars and pedestrians and finding a collision-free path. Bikes (both motor and human powered) are generally much better at evading than at stopping. That "trance" is actually deep, but deliberately unfocused ("sense everything at once" instead of "focus on one thing at a time") concentration. Ignoring the obvious illegality, this would still be bad for mainly two reasons: #1 it all breaks down as soon as a pedestrian does something unpredictable (which he of course has every right to do) and #2 the external behavior gets imitated by people who don't actually have the skill (and who won't know they don't have it before they hit someone)