Can you tell us about your cycling experience and personal safety comfort level?
I ask because not all cyclists will have the same abilities or comfort level.
Personally, I don’t mind riding in the heaviest urban traffic, but certainly plenty of others, while happy to ride on even urban side streets when traffic is light, will never even dream of riding where I do, and that is fine - if they don’t feel their skills are up to it, then they shouldn’t ride there.
Just like skiing or snowboarding - you have the most fun where you feel safest that you can handle things that might come up. These things come from experience and practice, they are skills, not doubt about it.
Also, I am guessing you don’t ride a bike with drop handlebars. And it appears that you have some sort of social grudge against people wearing performance clothes when they are, well, performing.
I will leave the outfit stuff alone, but drop handlebars are not any less safe then sitting upright. Your vision is not impaired, your reaction time is not less. Others may be able to argue this better then me, but it may be (based on my own experience) that both are actually improved compared to being upright.
What you do get from a bike with drop handlebars is a body position that is far more efficient at capturing the energy of your legs and transporting it to the pedals and then to the wheels. This is probably extended by most of the riders on such bikes because their toes are in toe clips on the pedals, or even more likely, their shoes actually snap on to the pedals with a release system akin to ski boots.
It is counter-intuitive, I know, but in my experience, feet strapped to the pedal (but able to come off in an emergency) is a safer way to ride. A bump or jolt will not cause your feet to fly off the pedals, which can result in a sudden loss of balance or control and maybe a BIG wobble side to side while you correct. Instead, it is much easier to maintain control when clipped in.
So, while the drop down riders are going faster then you, and you might think they are racing, because of the major increases in efficiency even independent of their fitness level they may actually be working LESS hard then you to go that rate compared to the slower rate you are traveling.
Also, even for upright bikes, the geometry of the frame, and proper fitting matters. I have a nice mountain bike, upright, that fits me well, that I ride on road and off. My girlfriend’s bike is about the same size, but the angles in the frame are much “gentler” leaving me even more upright when I ride it, the seat is much more cushy resulting in lost energy transferred to the seat instead of the pedals as I ride, and the result is a much less comfortable, efficient, and yes, safe ride in comparison to my bike.
Not all bikes are the same, and while I don’t know what kind of bike you have, I hope you will consider now that there are features of any bike that are actually safety related that you may not have realized. Perhaps even your bike is not as safe as you think, and that you end up spending more effort to keep it from leading you astray then you need to with a safer bike for you (even if you stay with an upright model).
Bikes, in part for efficiency, and in part for safety reasons I describe, are not one size fits all. Probably the riders you see, if they are riding expensive bikes, have paid in part to have all this taken into account with a bike that is safer for them because it fits better and reacts better and allows them to react better.
Now, it sucks that a guy hit a lorry, that’s for sure. Sometimes that happens. Sometime the lorry hits the bike. Sometimes cars collide. All these things can and do result in fatalities.
If the worst accidents that ever happen on the roads where you live is that occasionally a bike hits a lorry, then you are living in the closest thing to traffic paradise I have ever heard of and I want to ride there myself 