Originally Posted by
FBinNY
I've stayed alive and uninjured over 55+ years of riding roads shared with motor vehicles, most of which were not designed with bicyclists in mind, by focusing on myself and what I can do to ride smart.
That, indeed, is how you use a bicycle safely.
It starts with following the actual laws, for example recognizing when one must yield the right of way to another road user
It continues to recognize things that are perhaps legal, but widely known to be inadvisable because they place unrealistic reliance on other's perfection - for example passing vehicles on the right in anything other than a very slow and hyper cautious way
It ultimately comes to include nuances of strategic best practice, for example recognizing that when there's not car behind you, it can be useful to ride further out into the road where you're more visible to drivers (or even pedestrians and other cyclists) who might try to enter or cross the road you're on after an overly quick glance that might at best detect a giant car, but could too easily miss a cyclist lost in the visual curb clutter (and would be
beyond certain to miss one in a misplaced roadside path!)
Those focused on the lack of a third stop sign might remind themselves that neighborhoods like this have hundreds of driveways, many with poor sight lines that children can zip out of.
Which gets us back to the issue of remembering not to do things which create danger - such as
barge into a street without looking, doubly so when one would not have the right of way, or even when one could, not when others are too close to react. All of those incidentally things spelled out in the actual laws.