To the cyclists among us, how do you overcome the fear of riding in the middle of heavy trafficked roads during rush hour? This is very common in the Seattle area and almost as common in Dallas.
If I take the lane I'm in the clear during rush hour as well. The thing to remember is that a cyclist on a road bike is generally able to accelerate faster 0-5 or 0-10 than most vehicles from a stop so clearing an intersection with the cars isn't hard. Cars obviously leave cyclists behind past 5-10MPH because they've overcome their inertia. Usually the only guys clearing an intersection before me on a start are guys on sport bikes and I can lane share with them (though we'd look silly for not just bypassing the traffic).
When you're the faster vehicle its rather reassuring since you can more or less get the same respect as everyone in a car after a couple blocks. If the traffic is moving at a good speed for a bike, you can usually you can just blend into a lane and no one will honk or look at you funny... after all, the cars holding the cyclist up and I think everyone is happier when we're not lane sharing.
I watch my back at every single crossing. Every one of them, zero exception. I slow down when it goes down hill. I slow down when cars are next to me. I don't care if some bikes pass me full speed like "hey look how fast i go". I don't go slow either, but I'm not "full speed". Bikes brake very poorly, specially road bikes. (Mountain bikes brake a lot better, btw. Much larger tire.)
Also important, if there are cars parked in busy areas I go on the far left of the bike lane (there's no way you can anticipate being door'd). Saves me about twice a week. I go back on the far right whenever there's no cars parked.
And when there's no bike lane and cars go by relatively fast, I just claim the lane (of course you need to go nearly as fast as cars for that, else you're going to piss off a lot of people and create traffic issues).