A healthy dose of paranoia is absolutely the way to survive on your bike. About the only thing you can trust not to screw you over is a tree. Of course, trees can easily conceal other objects...
I am invisible in my mind when I'm riding. In fact, the one thing that catches me off guard is people yielding when they shouldn't be yielding - drives me crazy, and throws off my game.
Can't stand that. If they'd just gone when they should have, I wouldn't have had to fully stop and unclip. Working on my trackstands, but can only do them for a few seconds still...
In Sydney, Australia there is a $109 fine for cycling on a footpath (for those 13 and older), and a $319 fine for not wearing a helmet.
That means a 13 year old trundling down a 5 meter wide footpath to the local shops on Sunday morning is up for a $428 fine, roughly 23 hours of adult minimum wage work.
It seems to be seldom enforced, but it is doing a good job at what I think is the main objective - keeping people off bikes and in their car paying road tolls to the government and their private contractor businesses.
