Northern California - West San Jose to Moutain View bike commute without getting killed

Although the bad drivers around here are probably a minority of the cars out there, that's enough to causes unnecessary traffic and kill bicyclist.

If I wanted to bike from the 85/17 area to the 85/237 area, what would be a good way to go that keeps me on the safest routes?

I was thinking prospect to foothill to grant...

Prospect to Stelling to [Hollenbeck to Pastoria to Evelyn] or [Homestead to Foothill to Grant]

My commute is from Menlo Park to the 85/17 area. I've taken literally dozens of different routes. Without knowing your specific details I recommend staying southwest of 85 for as much as possible as you will have less traffic and significantly fewer red lights. Prospect and Cox are good east-west roads. Stelling is a good north-south road. Study the map and experiment with taking residential streets.

I don't have much experience with the northern part of your route (from 280/85 north) as I always just hop on Foothill there.

I take San Tomas to Central. Road is wide. Not the most beutiful ride but safe and fast. Since they are an expressways not many drivers can right or left hook you. You can make a lot of the lights so this helps keep your commute time down. The alt. during rush hour you have to contend with ppl putting on make up and on cells. Plus, like I says during rush hour you will have to stop at every light.

I found San Tomas to be pretty bad for lights. There aren't a super high number of intersections but if you do hit a red light you can easily spend 2 minutes waiting for it to cycle. Multiply this by 3 or 4 lights and it is no fun at all. The long red light cycle is true for all the major roads which is the main reason I try to avoid them now.

At first I tried optimizing my route for shortest distance which had me on the major roads like these. But ultimately I found that if I took a longer route (even 2 miles longer) that my door to door commute time was 5-10 minutes shorter. Plus a whole lot less frustrating. Now I optimize for "least non-moving time" which translates directly to fastest overall commute time.

Here's one of my routes from a couple months ago that is fairly typical for me: http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/254810

The biggest drawback of my method is that takes a while to study the map and memorize the routes.

I've never rode the route you are planning but based on what I found out in my own daily commute its actually more efficient to bypass streets that looks like they can take you directly to your destination. I've had more success with streets that are out of the way and actually arrive earlier to where I work despite the additional mileage of the back roads. And have more fun too.

Prospect to Foothill to Grant is the route I take (I occasionally commute from S85/S101 to 85/237).
Pretty safe.