Originally Posted by Raleighroader In most cities, you cannot always safely commute from point A to point B. That has to be accepted.

No it doesn't. There's absolutely no reason any particular route can't be cycled safely. It may require changes to driver attitudes, road configuration, law enforcement, or all of the above, but the idea of cyclists being scared off the road is deeply offensive to me. The only thing that 'has to be accepted' is how hard you're prepared to fight the battle.

Roads aren't dangerous, only the people using them are. If a road design is such that it 'encourages' dangerous driving practice, it's up to everyone to resist their impatient urges and drive with everyone's safety in mind. It staggers me that drivers don't get this. Why is it in this day and age of obsessing over safety, that driving gets a free pass?

Well sure, it doesn't need to be accepted in the long run, as you work to change the roads, drivers' attitudes, etc. I just meant that for now, for a potential ride to work tomorrow or next week, there are some routes in every city that are just too dangerous to cycle.

I subscribe to the laws of probability. If you commute 100 days a year, for ten years, that is 1,000 round trips, all during rush hour. A "dangerous" route may still be safe enough to survive one year of commuting without getting hit, maybe even two or three. But ten years? That's why I say that any route that requires drivers to do something special to avoid you, is a route where eventually a driver will fail to do that.

The route described to start this thread sure did not sound like one where you could count on surviving 1,000 round trips on a bike.