I get treated better when I'm on my commuter wearing street clothes than when I'm in my cycling clothes and on my road bike. I stick more to the less-traveled neighborhood streets on the commute, though, vs. the county roads with more car traffic (but wider lanes and shoulders) for the longer rides. Maybe that's part of it.

Last week, our city's Metropolitan Planning Organization had a public meeting to discuss future plans for the biking/jogging/walking path system. I went to that meeting and they had a presentation with statistics from a Federal government study about cycling safety. They did stress that a cyclist is 1.8 times more likely to be struck by a car when riding on a bike path vs. riding on the road. The most common location for the crashes is where the paths intersect with driveways (ie., business entrances).

So one of the proposed solutions for the bike path system is "road diet" (ie., restripe 2 or 3 of the 8 or 9 main east-west roads so that instead of four car lanes with no median, there will be two car lanes with a turn lane in the middle plus a bike lane on the far right in each direction). I'm all for a good bike system but YEEESH! Sharing the road with car traffic squeezed down to one lane each direction - no passing, etc. - to make room for BIKES??? Boy, if drivers didn't hate us already!

Deb