About a month ago I was commuting home on a Friday afternoon on a side street with a 30mph speed limit that is rarely traveled by cars. About a quarter mile back I hear the unmistakable rev of someone with their pedal to the metal and a truck comes up from behind travelling at freeways speeds. This guy decides to go into the empty oncoming traffic lane and blows by me and several other cars doing the speed limit. Well he apparently was very, very drunk and hit the curb, rolled his truck what looked like about 15 times, ending up in a drainage ditch. He was very badly bruised up but alive, and I and the other people travelling that road were very lucky to be alive.

You can't plan for things like that, and that experience proved to me that even the seemingly safest roads are not safe from drunk drivers. I say just do the commute, because you have just as much chance of being killed by a drunk while you are driving a car as you are when riding a bike, and the health and de-stress benefits you'll get by bike commuting are a sure thing.