My Safety Experiment

So I took the Trek out for a 20-mile night ride on Saturday. With my nice lights and reflectors, I felt pretty safe. But I tried one extra thing that could revolutionize safe riding in traffic:

I bought a driveway marker, a large red reflector on a thin fiberglass pole, and fastened it to my back basket. But to enhance safety, I had the reflector stick out straight to the left three feet, or about six inches beyond my handlebars. (I trimmed it so that the rod didn't stick out to the right.)

Here's my thinking. Cars think that they and you can fit in a lane if there's oncoming traffic. But if there's something sticking out into "their" space, they'll be skittish about trying to squeeze by. Also, because it looks so bizarre, they'll attend extra well as they go by. Also, because the rider is clearly a dork and a weirdo, they don't trust him not to do something wacky like swerve far to the left. So it's three psychological safety phenomena in one. Finally, for night riding it must be helpful to have a large round reflector sticking far out to one side (in addition to a taillight in the normal place). That should get drivers' attention.

Cars did seem to be passing me nice and wide, or waiting to pass with oncoming traffic or blind curves.

The problem is, it's just SO dorky. What price safety? Perhaps on tour I'll use it, when I'm already looking odd.