Almost useless riding tip: How close can you go?

I consider myself a bit of an artist, a commuting artist. The concrete jungle is my backdrop, the roads in all their myriad forms are my canvas and when I paint, boy, I really paint. They're probably not what you would call pretty, but I'm certain that my works would be pretty impressive. Now, that rather boastful intro is for something I did today which lit up a 100 watt light bulb over my head. Just another small drop in my growing ocean of riding tricks, techniques and skills... I think.

I was crawling at about 2.5 kph at an intersection where the left lane is being dug up. The diversion is marked with a angled wall of corrugated sheet that gradually blocks off the hole they've dug up and leaves only the top lane open for traffic.

Now crawling along, slightly bored because of the very obviously novice rider on tatty Splendor/CD100/clone ahead is taking too much time to get on with it. So I look left and take note of the space betwen my left hand pinkie, the bar-end and the aforementioned corrugated sheet. Given that the wall slopes away from me and that I'm wearing my titanium toe-slider equipped boot, I decided to try and see how close I could get to the wall before my slider scraped the wall.

What I found out was that there is a lot more space than you think there is. So much space in fact, that I'm convinced that you should, at least once, find out the quantum. So much space, that I never actually scraped my toe. When I reached the point where I didn't dare go any closer, I actually shifted my boot out about 2 or 3 cm and only then did it actually touch the sheet. You can do this at standstill, but it takes a lot more effort. Park the bike as close to a wall as you dare (you on the bike, right foot down, not on the stand). And keep reparking until your little toe (feet stuck out slightly to make the peg width a little more than the handlebar) touches the wall. You'll be amazed at how close you need to get before your handlebar or other unintended hard part touches.

Oh wait, I don't have a leg/crash guard. I hate the stupid things and they're useless anyway (please don't post comments about this, I will put up a separate Crash Guards Are Useless post soon). If you do have a crash guard, that will probably be the first thing to touch. If your low speed skills allow, find a long, smooth wall where you can edge closer without being disturbed or getting hurt and try this at a really slow speed.

Why should you do this?
I'm obsessive, I was bored, I tried it and it taught me something. Tomorrow, if some idiot in the last lane pulls a sudden lane change type thing (happened to me two days ago), I now know that I have a lot more space that I thought I did.

What else, in this rather OCD lesson plan, can I do?
Well, another experiment I intend to try is to figure out which obstacles my pegs will clear without scraping on when riding vertical. That way, again, in the urban crawl, It will make it easier for me to judge if that rock blocking the storm drain will need maneuvering around or not.

How much time will this save me?
Er... not sure. Six seconds over a three hour commute?