Originally Posted by
urbanknight
I'm not quite as old as you, but I have been riding hundreds of thousands of miles on all sorts of public roads and highways since I was 12 without incident, and being AFRAID of the real world isn't how I did it. Being as visible as possible and riding as predictably as possible has definitely helped.
I've cycled across the USA five times completely self contained. So like you, I've seen every type of road and biked them all. Lived to tell about it. And I can tell you about a few REALLY close calls where motorists nearly died avoiding me. And times when I was inches from being disintegrated by passing traffic. Thankfully nobody got hurt but I can tell you from experience, there are many roads out there that are barely safe for the most talented motorist much less adding a bike to the situation. I used every trick in the book for being visible and out of harms way, but there are those times when my presence made a sketchy situation worse for everyone including me.
I'm not advising anyone to live under their bed. Just realize that cycling on certain roads, under certain conditions, with road users of dubious skills, is NOT safe. It's frikkin' dangerous at times. So if there's a close call, or I get clobbered, I won't be crying about it. I swam with sharks. I survived. But there was a LOT of luck involved too. Looking at all the obituaries here, many are not as lucky.