Originally Posted by
LCI_Brian
Yes, I agree that "risk" needs to consider both likelihood and severity. But the challenge is that any given car/bike collision mode (such as a right hook) can have a wide variety of severities (from simple road rash to death). It's likely that the hit from behind crashes are going to have a higher severity on average compared to other collision modes, but I don't believe the crash data are detailed enough to make those kinds of distinctions. In practical terms as an individual cyclist, the best I can do is to make the shortcut assumption that all car/bike crashes could have a high severity, and ride in a way to minimize my chance of being in a car/bike crash.
OK very good... now the question from that still remains... do you tend to take the lane or tend to ride to the right, where practical?
And since you are trying to minimize your chances of a being in a car/bike crash, if a path is present that gets you close to where you want to go, do you chose the path, or for the "sake" of legal road cycling, do you stick to the road?
And last but not least, do you feel that lines on the street help or hurt you, as legal road user?