I've seen someone with a pool noodle sticking off the side of their bike at the minimum passing distance for cars. I think it's a great passive option.
I think even better is one of the fiberglass reflective marker rods.
If you wanted to be extra good, you could run a flashing light out to the end of it, and if you wanted to be extra bad, you could place something like broken spark plug ceramic at the end that would scratch up a car, but be harmless to humans.
I think one of the biggest things that they don't really teach you is that most jobs end up having only a small percentage of your time spent doing the unique element of that job.
It's import because a lot of people get scared away from careers that they think involve a lot of math, which they think they don't like. In reality, even in math heavy professions, math is only a small part of what they do, and the parts they do are so routine that they aren't hard.
This is comparing the British Empire of 100-150 years ago to the American empire of today. It would make more sense to compare equal time points.
During the British imperial heyday, American imperialists were absolutely out in the open like the British imperialists were. "White Man's Burden" was written to help convince Americans to take the Philippines as a colony.
The change from land-holding based open imperialism to more modern economic (and espionage) based covert imperialism happened across the board. There's a whole bunch of reasons behind it, but aviation, wireless communication, and plastics are a few of the big reasons.
You don't need to hold the Congo for rubber or Malaysia for gutta-percha when you can just create whatever you need out of fossil fuels.
Anyone replying "stretching" is basing their response on grade school gym class, not science.
Studies have not shown that stretching has a positive impact on injury prevention, and this has been widely known in the literature for over 20 years. Stretching can improve performance in some sports like gymnastics where increased flexibility is needed, but that is unrelated to injury.
Stretching has a negative effect on performance in other cases because it actually decreases muscle force generation.
Think about it, would you think that loosening all the belts on a machine would automatically make it less likely to break down?
So what does prevent injury?
I'd highly recommend the "well there's your problem" podcast (which is a YouTube-based podcast with slides) that jason (not just bikes guy) was a guest on.
I think in the beginning, guys like him were responding to what they thought was a real threat to their sport. If municipalities all started making Dutch-style good bike commuting infrastructure in cities, and kicked bikes off roads entirely, it would effectively kill the sport of road biking. You aren't intended to do high speed lycra-biking on those types of bike routes.
The problem is that he, and guys like him, rather than forming a coalition with other vulnerable road users to advocate for good bikes infrastructure and the right for cyclists to use roads, chose to sell out all other users to secure their own continued access to roads.
Obviously, as Jason points out this video, good Dutch bike infrastructure does not actually kill hobby biking, cause you can ride all you want on country roads and country bikepaths.
If you like the style of running shoes, but for just walking, and you want something wide, I'd go for altra LP alpine. I mainly like altra cause they don't squeeze my feet like hokas (and practically every other brand) do.
Lone peak is altra's top selling trail running/hiking shoe, but they made a hemp/suede casual version that should be pretty durable.
Altra also has the a version of the Torin (a road running shoe) for casual wear that's all leather, so it's probably pretty durable, but it's a little narrower, and i don't like the styling as much.
Ive never been a "running shoe for casual wear"-person, though, so i haven't worn either of those.
For slightly nicer looking (or cold weather) casual wear, I have Jim Green boots. They are very comfortable and basically the only boot company that actually makes something that doesn't squeeze your toes. If you don't like what they have, look for other boots/shoes made with stitchdown construction. Most nicer boots/shoes use a Goodyear (or similar) welt, which wraps the upper under your foot, making it more narrow. Stitchdown has the upper flip outwards at the midsole, making it wider.
For more casual wear, I have Bedrock clogs. Also super durable/resolable and nice and wide. It doesn't have any foam underfoot, which i like, but isnt for everyone.
For whatever reason, wikipedia seems to have been really pushed down the page on search engines specifically for medical information. It's a shame because I can acquire the surface level of information (which is all i really ever need) way faster from wikipedia than the other sites that come to the top of the list (mayo clinic, John's Hopkins, Cleveland clinic, govt sites).
I really shouldn't complain about it too much, cause they could be pushing pseudoscience blogs.
Just found uBlacklist.
Now to find something for whitelist searches (basically I only ever want recipes or medical information from a small list of sites).
Edit: duckduckgo has the capability built in, too
It's really the fundamental mistake of thinking "I am a smart person, educated and trained in a specific discipline, and if I apply myself to a field where I'm an outsider, I'll have a unique perspective that could disrupt the industry".
There are obviously people who are multidisciplinary, and there are obviously multidisciplinary teams, but you can't just step into a different discipline as an outside observer and come up with something that isn't completely full of holes.
People who are good at multidisciplinary collaborations are really good at letting their inexperience show, but that requires a lot of humility. If you drop an MD or a college professor onto a construction site, and have them come up with a list of ways they would improve the process, 19/20 of their suggestions will be obvious garbage to even a new construction worker. The key is to actually bounce those ideas off the people doing the work, and then you get useful stuff. Again, though, that takes humility that is particularly hard to find in academia.
Imagine slamming on the gas in your car. The car lurches forward, pushing your seat into you, and you start to accelerate forward.
As the driver, though, you feel like you are being pushed back into your seat, though it's pretty obvious that there is no force pushing you back, it's just the inertia of your body trying to stay put.
The only force in that system is the force of the car accelerating you forward, and the feeling of being pushed backwards is a fictitious force.
It's the exact same with rotational motion, just trickier to wrap your head around. If you have acceleration, you know there are unbalanced forces, and an object in orbit is constantly accelerating.
Like the other person said, they are really flexible. Really, my dream would be to have something like that that's on a hinge, or is otherwise deployable while riding so you could have it out while on roads, but put it out of the way while on bike paths.