I've a short commute (9 miles round trip) from a country home to the local far reach of an Austin Texas bus stop. Since I've been on these forums I notice a lot of tech safety advice, which lights to buy, where to mount them, who not to [censored] and how (not) to do it. Granted, there's only so much you can do with electronics and reflectors.
Between the bus stop and the sticks I've got two dangerous stretches of nighttime highway.
The first runs from the stop through a field and up a steep hill onto US I-35. At the top of the hill, I cross the freeway bridge on foot, and turn left onto a quarter-mile of feeder to my shopping-center cut-through. I turn on the blinkies, and walk until I'm through both intersections, paying careful attention to the lights and who's running them. Then I ride the shoulder a quarter mile into the shopping center. Good clearance on this stretch, and it would take a complete drunk or jerk to put me at risk. The remainder of the trip is mostly athletic track nearly four miles long running by the Dell Computer factory.
Near the end of my nighttime journey, the rough stuff happens on a local road running at freeway speeds decorated by a stoplighted intersection. Here's another quarter mile, no shoulder. I come out of a dead country road, stop, carefully check my lights, and wait for the main feed at the stoplight to pass. This gives me a hopefully-clear run over that 1/4 mile into my subdivision. This generally seems to work, even on a Saturday night. If I time it right, one car might pass me during this last stretch.
My question to you other commuters, day or night, is:
What are similar short moves that you pull to keep yourself safe?