I ride in the bike lane most of the time, in the left half of it to be out of range of car doors. Depending on traffic, I often take the lane before intersections to avoid right-hook collisions. (My state's driver's handbook is pretty clear on drivers being required to merge into the rightmost (bike) lane before turning right but hardly anyone actually does this.) I also take the lane when making a left turn, and when there isn't actually room for someone to pass me safely on the left but there might be room for a poor driver to think he can do so. I don't use bike paths much because (a) separate bike infrastructure doesn't go most places I want to go and (b) when it does go where I want to go, separate bike infrastructure is often infested with headphone-wearing joggers who can't hear my bell so I have to go very slowly or weave between them. When the joggers aren't too numerous (e.g. if it's raining) I do enjoy bike paths for recreation though. I started biking for transportation when a friend gave me a bike that had been sitting in her basement for a year gathering dust. It turned out to be as fast as taking the bus and also a lot cheaper. I had a low income at the time, so frugality was a huge motivation, but it turned out to be fun as well. There's also a great feeling of freedom in not having to check the bus schedule before you go somewhere. (For various reasons car ownership is not a viable option for me, though I'm thinking of getting a zipcar membership.) My first transportation bike was a 40lb mountain bike, but when I moved to a hilly city this year the weight was a problem. I didn't shop around much for a replacement, just got the first road-bike-like-thing I found at a garage sale. It has upright handlebars but otherwise appears to be a standard road bike (except for being 40 years old and French and having nonstandard bolt sizes, but what do you expect from a yard sale?) and I'm very happy with it. I can go straight up hills where I used to have to

If you are going to naively follow a system in America,* vehicular cycling is safer than naive use of car lanes, which is safer than bike lanes, but far better than these systems is to understand the source of the danger, to know when bike lanes help you and when they hurt you, to know when it's important to draw attention to yourself and how to do it. I think that there is some very important context missing from that critical article you cited. "Bicycle lanes" means something very different in the author's Denmark than Forester's America. Bike lanes in America are better than they used to be, but in the past their main effect was to kill cyclists. As a bicyclist or pedestrian, it is very important to learn to disobey traffic laws. They are of value to you only as they predict the actions of the cars. What is important it to pay attention to the cars and to know how the markings will affect them. The closest I have come to collisions, as a pedestrian, as a bicyclist, and even as driver, is by being distracted from the real danger of cars by the instructions of lane markings and traffic signals. * and probably the vast majority of the world. The Netherlands and Denmark are obvious exceptions. Perhaps there are lots of countries where basic bike lanes are better than nothing.