A similarly biased selection of Romanians I've met in western Europe include an architect (UK) and a bank manager (Loire region of France). However, I actually spent a month cycling around Romania in 2010 and never saw any crazy vans. It was really pleasant, never had any problems, lots of educated people with perfect English, great food, wine and beer. Highlights were cycling up this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transf%C4%83g%C4%83r%C4%83%C8%... - Brasov and Rasnov, plus the old tumble-down mansions on the backstreets of Bucharest, once known as the Paris of the East. Great country!

Those vans typically drive on the Bucharest-Pitesti-Catiulata-Sibiu-Deva-Arad-Nadlac route, outside of that you won't be seeing them but on that road they're impossible to ignore.

That's also a road on which you simply should not cycle.

Now that the M1 is open on a large part of those stretches it has gotten a lot better, there are still three dangerous segments left (along the river, up the black mountain and near Lugoj).