This. I spent ten days pootling from Hoek to Copenhagen last Summer, my first time cycling outside the UK. It took me a while to overcome my London commuting reflexes and have confidence that drivers would naturally give way to me at road junctions.
South Yorkshire is generally very safe, but I was living in New Zealand 18 months ago, so I think even Russian drivers would feel safe to me!
If the road's wide enough, it shouldn't be needed, but the amount of bloody motorists that won't even move to the rightmost of a wide lane to pass means that is can be helpful. I agree completely about when it's not wide enough, though: almost all sub-2m lanes should be removed, as far as I can recall.
I have a theory about that: I suspect too many motorists see speed limits as targets even when they enter an area so busy that stimuli are occurring faster than they can process them correctly. Rather than slow down a bit and relax, they fail to handle of many of them, especially relatively rare ones like cycles, getting more and more flustered and stressed as they get further into the area and so making more and more poor decisions. Most speed limits are set a bit high for stimuli density because the highway planners see it as a limit not a target.
As a former instructor I'll agree with that. Inexperienced drivers are being taught to drive at speeds they are not ready for - not the instructors fault as they have to train drivers to the standard the DSA require.
