I’ve discovered a life-saving device that allows cyclists to protect themselves and take back the road: the pool noodle.
Find one for about $2 anywhere: dollar stores, shopping malls, even the supermarket. Choose from the array of fun colors and use a bungee cord to strap this light, flexible toy to your bike rack so that it sticks out to the left side (or the right side, if you’re in a country where cars drive on the left). Start pedaling and watch as car after car moves over to the other lane.....
On roads with zero road shoulder, the pool noodle becomes our shoulder. It makes us more visible to passing cars and the 18-wheelers that used to skim us constantly.
The pool noodle is also a tool for advocacy. To every other vehicle on the road, that $2 piece of foam visualizes what the minimum three feet of safe passing distance looks like that is our legal right in more than 30 states in the US. As more urban dwellers take up cycling, think of the attention we can bring to sharing the road if we all strapped a pool noodle to the back of our bicycles.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
