adablduya

that ought to take care of the problem.

mr_bill

SHARED LANE YIELD TO BIKES sign

-mr. bill

I-Like-To-Bike

Either I wasn't clear or you fail to understand what you have posted. You wish to blame the cyclist for accidents caused by car occupants suddenly opening a door in front of cyclists who ride nearby, regardless of how much more dangerous the alternative road positioning may be for the cyclists at that location, and traffic conditions.

I do not believe that anymore than I believe cyclists riding legally should be held at fault for the incidents caused by illegal or unsafe motorist/passenger behavior wherever it may take place.

Perhaps you have never seen very busy but fast moving traffic on city streets with narrow lanes, and with legal car parking. I have seen very few cyclists (actually none) who choose to ride for any distance in the midst of fast moving traffic when there is a relatively safer place to ride (when ridden with caution) closer to the parked cars. My experience with such traffic was mostly in many years of commuting in .Philadelphia.

Paul Barnard

Avoiding a door zone accident is as easy as not riding in a door zone.

mr_bill

Avoiding dooring someone is as easy as looking before opening your door.


-mr. bill

Paul Barnard

I can only control one of those variables when I am riding.

I-Like-To-Bike

Just like avoiding rear end collision is as easy as not riding in a traffic lane. Easy peasy, eh?

Rollfast

When you come up to a vehicle that has stopped, or anything with people in it, except to stop or go wide. I would have to fault the cyclist for inattentive riding.


These things are 90+ percent avoidable.

noisebeam

Passing a stopped vehicle without severe crash with possible death needs to be at least 99.99999% avoidable. Personally I'd want a few magnitudes higher.

mr_bill

When you stop a car, expect to look before opening your door. These things are 100% preventable.

-mr. bill

tyrion

When the choice is between riding in a door zone and walking, I'm riding in the door zone. Born to be wild.

Rollfast

The bike lanes in this town are to the left of the parking zone, you have a 100% chance of avoiding getting doored by a front passenger and 50% by a rear passenger.


Don't forget to look BEHIND you or you might get hit by a car.

Paul Barnard

No, it is not just like it.

Paul Barnard

I am trying to think of a situation I have been in where I had to ride in the door zone. Can you give me a riding situation in which your choice would be the door zone or walking?

prathmann

The last few local cyclist fatalities I remember were a father and young daughter riding on a sidewalk and an older couple riding on the shoulder. 'Not riding in a traffic lane' did nothing to avoid a rear end collision in either case.

adablduya

first, i quite understood what i myself posted. second, you conveniently embellished my point with your own verbiage; i didn't mention "regardless" of any other hazards or risks. finally, it's rather unrealistic to assume that that a cyclist would be at fault in 100% of instances of door zone collisions; however, you do make a very good point in referencing fast moving urban traffic settings being a higher risk factor for managing door zone dangers.

finally, i agree with you in that cyclists should not be held at fault for the actions caused by others. other than door zones, i never mentioned that cyclists would be held at fault for those incidents. my point was that avoiding door zones, GENERALLY SPEAKING, is well within the control of the cyclist. if an incident is foreseeable, it is thus preventable.

tyrion

A road on which there is fast traffic (40mph +) and parked cars, with about 4 feet between the parked cars and the moving traffic.

I-Like-To-Bike

Why not? Not to be too dramatic (as if that were possible on A&S) choosing lane position on busy and/or high speed streets is just a matter of picking your poison. Less dramatic would be to acknowledge that different lane positioning involves different risk factors (likely injury severity of mishaps and their probability). Those who swear that there never is a reason to ride in a door zone are recommending that others not use their own reasoning powers to evaluate risk, but rather to ignore their cycling environment and place blind faith in "Bicycling Correctness" orthodoxy.

Paul Barnard

A number of other factors would come into play before I could decide whether or not to ride that road. I most assuredly wouldn't ride it in the door zone. Getting doored into 40MPH traffic doesn't sound like my kind of party.

tyrion

I try hard to avoid them, but on occasion I find myself on them.

I-Like-To-Bike

Routinely riding at 10-15mph in the middle of traffic traveling at 40mph is your kind of party?

Paul Barnard

Read the post you just quoted and see if you can find anything in there that might steer you in a different direction.

mr_bill

Chicago taxi:


-mr. bill

mr_bill

I've heard this good advice. "Always treat taxi doors as though they are already open."

Which simply doesn't work for uber/lyft because they are so often stealth. So you have to unmask them.

So, some observations from recent biking in Chicago and Boston, where uber/lyft are everywhere during parts of the day/night.

In Boston, many, though not all, uber/lyft have logos on the windshield *AND* in the rear window.

In Chicago, near zero uber/lyft logos on the rear window. BUT, if they want to pick up/drop off at airports, they need an airport sticker on the back window.

Lots of lyfts are running a lyft amp on the dashboard. It's usually the default color - magenta-ish - which stands out in your rear view mirror.

In traffic, keep an eye for the uber/lyft app running on a cell phone in a dash mount. Keep a mental note of that car in case it catches up to you again up the road. (Murphy says it will catch up to you just as they find their fare.)

Anytime you see a group of people standing near the curb, looking at a SINGLE smart phone and glancing up the street, they are uber/lyft passengers waiting for a pickup. If they look at the car who is passing you on your left, you are about to get right hooked.

An uber/lyft may make the mad dash to the curb from ANY lane, even ANY direction.

An uber/lyft stopped "for no reason" is stopped for a reason - someone is about to get out.
But an uber/lyft stopped for a reason, stopped in traffic, stopped at a crosswalk, stopped at a light, or stopped at a stop sign, may also be stopped for another reason. Someone about to get out.

Passengers in a taxi have to pay the driver, so there is usually a brief delay between stop and exit.
Passengers in an uber/lyft have already paid, zero delay between stop and exit.
But since passengers in an uber/lyft have already paid, at any moment the car is stopped they may decide to "just get out here." (One particularly anxious/adventurous soul opened the door while they were still moving.)

-mr. bill

mr_bill

Taxis on beeper track....

-mr. bill