The cyclists who are "taking the lane" are actually just preventing you from doing the unsafe thing, which is trying to squeeze past them without changing lanes

The cyclists who are "taking the lane" are actually just preventing you from doing the unsafe thing, which is trying to squeeze past them without changing lanes. Nobody's ever making you do that, ever. I tend to be pretty considerate when I'm on my bike. I have good situational awareness thanks to years of urban cycling, so I can adjust my own speed to the flow of traffic and rarely get a bunch of cars backed up behind me for very long. I also avoid routes where drivers are not entirely in control of their cars, such as congested multi-lane roads. What I mean is that cars are closer together than a safe stopping distance, so that they can't really react in time if there is a slow-down, plus a lot of the drivers are quite inattentive. You can get a sense for which roads are dangerous based on where car crashes occur. For instance rear-end crashes mean that even a car going slower than expected is vulnerable to getting hit, which requires exceptionally inept driving.