I'm going to go with chicken out.
I got rid of my car in April 1999.
I started bike commuting in March 2006. It was only this past December that I broke the 7 year, 4 month chain of daily bike commuting. (It was 1,596 consecutive workdays, BTW.)
A freak snowstorm while at work killed the streak. (While I blame Mom Nature, I knew the forecast could be wrong, yet I left the bike with studded snow tires at home. So if you catch me in a moment of honesty, I was to blame, not Mom Nature or The Hyperbole Channel.)
And yet, every day that it's not perfect out, and every day when I'm feeling less than 100% (and at our age those are many), the little voice inside my head tells me I don't have to ride my bike to work.
Yes. Despite all my years of habituation and experience, I could talk myself out of cycling to work any time I choose. I just choose not to listen to the voices.
I work in 'da hood. I know what that's like too.
Yes, bike commuting can be exhilarating for all the wrong reasons, but when I get home, that disappears too.
Like everything else in life, you don't know if you can do it until after you've done it.