I was "born-again" last year and only fell off twice so far, first was learning the tight turning circle when slowly lining up to park but only hurt my pride. The second was being on a washed out single track lane covered in mud/leaves - shouldn't have been there, but then neither should the mud...
Riding defensively and treating all other road users/pedestrians as complete blind muppets on the phone is a good method. Having an escape route at all times is also crucial.
A lot of my recent near misses have been seen a long way off or predicted, using thinking like "I bet he/she pulls out" or "what if he/she pulls out" also helps. The bit I hate is at a junction where you have people waiting on the left and right so you have to go through in the middle of the lane hoping neither pulls out.
I'm far from expert but accept that I will always be learning or "having a quiet word with myself" to tone it down a bit or take it easy. There have been enough accidents/deaths recently of bikers and it can be easy to say that what we do is extremely dangerous but then think of the old biker who plods along without too much haste, try's to predict muppetry, doesn't get annoyed and doesn't take risks, the oldest one I know is 90+ so i plan to out-do him.
