Yeah they seem to either NOT, see you, or, they just don't care, because you are on a bike and they figure you will stop or get out of the way. I also firmly believe there are many that just plain don't like motorcycles AND, the people who ride them. It is a no win situation no matter which way you look at it.
Right now in this city, it is NOT a matter of if, it is a matter of when a driver will get you and how bad it will be. I can't chance it anymore, especially with the wife on the back.
About 15 years ago, I made the exact same decision about riding my bike to/from work in DC.
It would save me very decent money (over time) from paying to park car and ride the metro daily (and 30 minutes of travel time), OR to drive my car in and park ($20 every day); cycle parking was a quarter an hour.
But the traffic was terrible (all the way from my house the 17 miles in), but DC was just a madhouse. Merging from the 35mph GW Parkway up onto the DC beltway (over the Potomac into DC) went from 7 to 70 miles an hour in 35 feet in a hard lean, and no one on the packed three lane let you in. Racing multiple short lights (with cameras) in long lines of cars worrying if you stopped on yellow you would get creamed by a Suburban, or run the light and get a big fine (to not get creamed). And the DC international cab driver's association, has 10 thousand cabs, but just one shared driver's license for all of them. And potholes bad enough to bend my rear rim (the very first time I rode my 2d bike into work to show it off). A buddy of mine (in our computer section) got knocked off his bike three summers in a row. And, I found I was usually angry about the ride for a half hour after each ride in or home. It gave bad mojo to riding in general, and needed to stop.
It was not
if..... only
when you would eventually get hit.
So it was 15 more years of riding a subway, jogging up 100 yard escalators, changing trains both ways, standing up the whole way on crowded days, sitting with Aholes with blaring walkmen, and fat girls who smashed you up against the window (though they were really warm in the cold winters). They made you fall asleep and miss your connection (waking up 15-20 miles out at the end of some wrong train line).
