Originally Posted by
invisiblehand
.....It crossed my mind that distribution of passenger car/truck size -- and their doors -- might be different across the US and Australia. If doors are generally longer here, I speculate that dooring becomes more likely and a greater problem.
If you think that cheaper gas would lead to bigger cars, then it appears that gasoline is -- at least in 2006 -- cheaper in the US.
http://www.shell.com/home/content/au...ices_0116.html
Sometime back, I measured the distance from the outside edge of the passenger tires to the outer edge of the driver's door on my midsized SUV, and it came to just over 10 ft (3.1m). Again, that's on my "midsize" SUV, full size trucks and SUV's dwarf my SUV when I park next to them, plus the white stripe furthest from the curb of our bike lanes averages between 11 ft (3.3m) to 12ft (3.6m). Add that most motorist do not park their cars up against the curb, leaving a gap of considerable distance at times, it leaves little margin of error even when riding the bike lane line furthest from the curb.