My experience has taught me that taking the lane is far and away the safest option if you're in town. If there are more than two lanes I don't even think twice: riding far to the right is an invitation to bad behavior so far's I've seen. Most of the road rage I've heard about/been privy to has actually been on the part of cyclists who feel they were recklessly endangered (yours truly included).

It's a two-way street, though, and a post above kind of covered it, that if cyclists behave like cars sometimes, then they must behave like cars all the time, if only for predictability's sake. There are only two times I can see cyclists in the wrong, and that is when they either ride on the sidewalk (although I'm not sure how I feel about BMX bikes in this situation), or when they ride with entitlement. Having blown through my share of stop signs, I share in this latter category. But riding like a car only when it's convenient is a) glaringly inconsistent and therefore dangerous because motorists have no idea what you're doing/about to do; b) the kind of other-disregarding behavior that really sticks in people's craw. People don't get aggressive readily when they feel like something completely mundane and un-noteworthy is happening; or, they're being respected.

Yeah, I wear Lycra (and lots of it!), but I do (now) stop at all stop signs: it's a trade-off of responsibilities and privileges. And for what it's worth, I'm only ever harassed by teenagers in Audis and they're only barely human, so yeah...