Houston is not a great place to be on/near the roads, whether traveling by car, bike or foot. People always talk about Houston as a car city but a large part of it is a car city designed for the 1960s that has not been updated as the population density inside the city has increased. Between the newcomers in the city/country who are trying to navigate confusing geography at high speeds, the people found everywhere who just have bad driving habits, and the totally insane (like the guy I personally saw drive UP a highway off ramp because he got sick of waiting in a traffic jam), there is a lot of poor driving out there. Add that to a lack of pedestrian/bike infrastructure (there is a lot of the city with no sidewalks, let alone bike lanes), and just general poor traffic management (no signals at intersections that need them; the city lets people park in traffic lanes on fairly busy streets, meaning that drivers are changing lanes suddenly to get around them; high speeds on streets with narrow lanes), ugh. Plus the police are so busy dealing with the truly insane traffic violators that they don't spend enough time on the everyday violations to keep them in check, let alone regulating bicyclists (by whom I have also seen plenty of bad behavior).