On the other hand, do you think you would have had that bad experience to begin with if you had better understood icing and all the weather products to help you make a good decision?
I fly in visible moisture below freezing all the time. I've *never* scared myself with ice. But I do look at the conditions very closely and always have a plan. Icing is really the only thing you'll see that causes me to sit around and stare at weather data.
In the summer - I wait until it's time to go - pull up the radar and either go or don't go. It's pretty straight forward then.
For this particular flight I do have FIKI, but I'm not fond of taking on ice in a Malibu. They do not carry ice well at all.
I've asked myself that question, and I'm not sure my decision to fly the route and altitude would have altered at the time. This was on a flight to LA (Fullerton) and every WX source I could get my hands on indicated that the icing level should have been above my altitude (10,000 feet) at the destination.
But it wasn't. I was in the clear most of the way, but by the time I reached the range separating the Central Valley from the LA basin, I either needed to climb to stay above the clouds, or go in to the clouds. I opted to go in as I would need to begin an approach soon anyway. As soon as I entered the cloud, bam, the windscreen was solid ice.
I asked for a decent and finally found a clear layer at 9,000 (wrong altitude but they let me stay), and decided to dive bomb it for the decent to approach. Bad idea. Ended up doing an unusual attitude recovery in actual IMC. (Learned an important lesson, that's how that s*** happens.) But I worked it out and finally by 6,000 feet the ice was magically stripped off by the rain. F***ing whew. The remainder of the approach to KFUL was a non-event.
I have no idea where the briefer got his information on icing levels. Skew T's? Pireps? Don't know. But, regardless, it was a long flight and conditions can change. My personal minimum now no mountain crossings in IMC. I have no problem flying up and down the Valley in IMC, or over the coastal hills, but above 6K? Don't want to mess with it. Maybe in the Summer, but the event happened at LA in March.
). The link is to my YouTube playlist. 
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