Originally Posted by Giro

Consider someone taking a not extremely busy route who encounters just 8 cars per day of biking commuting 5 days/week for 25 weeks/year. That would be 1,000 such encounters per year. Do that for 10 years for 10,000 motor vehicle encounters. Odds you are not hit would be 0.99999^10,000 = 0.9048369 or about 90%. Over 20 years it is only 82% you would go motor vehicle collision free. Only a tiny percent of inattentive, incompetent, etc. drivers is needed to have the odds of a collision with a motor vehicle 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 for a frequent cyclist.

As you suggest, taking the side roads is often a way to tilt the odds more in a cyclist's favor. And that is one of the things I do.

It also makes me think (or hope) the odds of a really drunk, etc. driver are less than 1 in 100,000.