Originally Posted by
JonnyHK
We're strange like that! You should see me bash my left hand into the door every time I go to change gears when I'm driving in the US. My passengers never failed to get a giggle from that.
That's OK. The very first time I drove in England, I rented a car at Heathrow in the early AM after a no sleep flight from NY, and headed up to Sheffield. I ended up "shifting" the door handle a number of times, and can't count the number of times I went around roundabouts the wrong way -- Brits back then had excellent reflexes so I made it all the way OK.
A Canadian friend who spends lots of time in Australia is a slow learner, so he made a magnetic sign he sticks on the back of his rentals. "I'm not drunk--- I'm Canadian".
Meanwhile, An anti dooring law, which makes drivers and passengers exiting curbside liable will only cause problems. You want people exiting curbside, rather than traffic side, so some logical rules have be put into place, Either have cabs stop in the bike lane so curbside is truly curbside, or stop buffered out into the traffic lane farther. Otherwise, people will get into the habit of exiting traffic side, which will be worse.
Or you can adopt an anti dooring rule that applies only to proper full width bike lanes and the traffic side, and educate cyclists on the real dangers of passing stopped vehicles curbside -- especially cabs.
I'm a cyclist, and am for cyclists, but I don't consider cyclists to be sacred cows, and laws that try to do so, only create newer and worse problems.