Usefulness of muay thai-style roundhouse kick in real life?

[Little Apple]

If the person does not know how to fight even a soccer kick with some hard shoes will take their leg out.

I do full contact karate and Muay Thai.

The way I see it that in self defense you do not really want to use kicks much. You have more control with fists and in the clinch.

The kicks that are affective are low kicks and thai style is the best for them. Mid or high kicks I would do with shoes.

You can easily shin kick someone out who doesn't know anything. Depending on the shoe it is overall stronger than the shin in my opinion.

I would say rather, that you have to know your strengths and what's most effective for you. I'm tiny, the clinch would be a little bit of death to me. I'm probably never going to be faced with a self-defense sit. where I'm against someone my size or smaller. Therefore, I want to avoid body-to-body tussling as much as I can. Of course I don't avoid training the clinch, just in case, but I don't want to seek it out either. If I'm out in the parking lot and need to defend myself, I want to fight dirty and end it quick: take the knees, throat, and eyes.
As for kicks, I'd kick with my shin (shoes or not) because that's what I know. If I'd ever trained savate, maybe I'd say differently, but I haven't.

[glendanfig]

Getting hit with a well-thrown thai round kick is like getting hit with a baseball bat.

Getting hit with a tae kwon do round kick is like getting hit with a piece of light rattan.

fucking right. not to mention no shoe can protect all those little bones in ur foot if you dont land the kick correctly or they block it...
now a good comparison would be to kick someone with steal toes or a MT kick.