Last weekend I was enjoying a ride across the Cotswolds and saw someone had strung fluo orange ribbon in loads of trees to mark out a route of some sort. It was really visible in the breeze agains the green background. Some of it had fallen off - I picked up about 18" of the stuff and attached it with an inner-tube band that's on my bars to the end of my bar, leaving a foot or more trailing as a streamer (I was in that kind of mood, OK). I have a hipster-tw@t rando safety triangle (home made of course) hanging off my seat pack and thought maybe the handlebar streamer would add more hi viz effect.
I've noticed no difference in having the rando triange on my saddle or seat pack, I just like having something visible there as I don't like dayglo tops etc much. But after just under a couple of hundred miles with my jolly orange bar streamer on I'm beginning to think it has an effect. Perhaps it's impossible to be seen as a serious roadie with streamers on your bars and there's studies that suggest an experienced-looking cyclist gets less space on the roads. Maybe they wonder if I'm a child from a distance, a bit 'special' or just see it as a bit of fun. Maybe it appears as a kind of opposite of how you get close-passed more often if you're hooning through town on an open road, or going some up a short rise, as if a certain driver feels challenged by a fast road rider and has to react, to be superior. The roads are competitive, space-defended environments after all.
I think all drivers make split-second judgements on situations and other road users and perhaps this streamer says children, unthreatening, fun, something - enough to give me the benefit of any decision. It does gets attention very well and sits right at the far right edge of the bike (on the end of a wide flared bar), making me seem wider or changing the reference point drivers base passing distance on, like those old reflector arms but more effective in the daylight. I'd say I've had fewer close passes since fitting it and been suprised by the usual suspect loud Golfs or BMWs and SUVs giving me a fair bit of room, or the lack of close passes going up a short section of road I know well where it's usually fairly common.
Positive bias, too soon to say or a beneficial way of affecting split second driver thinking? Not sure. Maybe try it and report back? If it doesn't work at least you know you'll really be winding up the next roadie you pass
), I also get young lads hanging out the window too winking at me. The look on their faces when they see mine 
It's just a streamer, looks a bit like this 
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