The conversation on the relative virtues of wider and narrower handlebars among my esteemed fellows brought a smile of amusement to my face. Not for me, this business of checking bar widths against my shoulders. I rode what I had. But, many a time I walked into a bike shop and asked for the widest set of (drop) bars in the store, then checked the inside clearance against the width of my bottom. Do you know how hard it was to get wide drops for the back of a tandem back then? :-)
harvey sachs mcLean VA (been riding tandems for over 35 years, mostly with the same stoker)