Oh man, cycling with super-prejudice sucks. There's some guy from Minneapolis on YouTube who does videos complaining about cars not completely moving to the other lane to pass him and stuff like that. I would love to be able to complain about the little things. There are also plenty of safety videos for how to ride in traffic in the city, take the lane, etc., but a lot of techniques just don't work when you're cycling around road prejudice and unfavorable roads.
There's a four-lane road {two lanes for each direction} near me that's 45mph with narrow lanes. When I'm travelling North I get up to 40-50 on the downhill and maintain 35 for the following climb up to the light, so I feel plenty safe around the crazies, but travelling South is a nightmare. It's a half-mile climb with only a couple inches between the white line and a high curb. With the high speed, narrow lanes, and local motorist behavior, taking the lane even with the other lane for cars to manuever always results in honking or angry, close passes. I am normally very much against avoiding roads just because of situations like this because those sucka's can just take the two seconds to move, but this particular road I have started avoiding, even though it has no parallel streets and a detour adds several miles to my trip. That's not advice though. Detours to avoid stress are no good. I'm working on getting over my avoidance of this one little section.
[Don't necessarily take this next paragraph as good advice, it's just what I have been doing]
But on narrow, single-lane, double-yellow, high speed 45+ roads with no lights ahead to slow traffic's average speed and too much traffic for cars to pass using the oncoming lane, taking the lane is not a realistic option so I just ride a foot from the debree-zone and watch my mirror almost more than I watch what's in front of me. That mirror is crucial. It's just a little bar-end Roadie Mirror but it really helps. I can usually tell when someone who's [censored] is about to pass me. My usual plan is that when it looks like someone is going to try to squeeze past within unsafe inches, I move an extra foot to the left (do not read as swirving, which is never a good idea when the object is predictability) so that they correct to the left or diffuse themselves and slow down to wait for a safe pass. If they look like they're just going to plow through me, then at least I've given myself more room to jump out of the way. The bottom line on these nightmare roads is that you need to wear some thick skin. Cars are going to pass within what might be a very uncomfortable distance. The three-foot rule would be glorious but it's not usually what's given. I've just gotten used to judging the speed and passing distance of cars with my mirror and determining what I need to do to not get dead.
It's also worth saying that I have two SuperFlash lights on my rear, an under-saddle light, and two Planet Bike 2-Watt lights in front. I also wear light-colored jersey's and ride high in dangerous conditions. I know these people can see me.
Oh yeah, and daibutsu's got it. There are some good clothing options for safety around rednecks. Try American Flag cycling jerseys, Marine Corps jerseys, Army, Police, "Ride for the Cure". It's funny that wearing bright yellow has less of an effect than wearing patriotic stuff.
