The Doors!
You’ve just parked, turned off your car, and given a sigh of relief that you’re no longer stuck in traffic. You reach for your things, kick open your door and CRASH!
Okay, so you didn’t “door” a cyclist. But you very well could have! Just because you stopped driving doesn’t mean you can stop looking. Dooring is one of the most common crashes for cyclists. And in many areas (including Massachusetts) the driver is at fault for opening their door in the path of oncoming traffic! So remember:
Regarding insults to drivers, we have a part-vs-whole problem. Most drivers are pretty good; I once stuck a rear-facing camera on my bicycle for my commute home, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that in the nastiest section of my then-commute (multi-lane, nominal 35mph limit, so often faster) something like 3/4 of the drivers would move over into the other lane well before reaching me — so soon that I was not aware of their lane change otherwise.
Then, there was the yahoo who insisted on trying to pass me on the left while I was passing a turning car on the left, and beeped at me for having the audacity to be in his way (and this, leading to the section of road where there is usually a traffic jam, so it’s not as if he was going to get anywhere sooner by passing me. Maybe he really wanted to play leapfrog). It’s the yahoos who will do you in, and since you don’t know which driver is a yahoo and which is not, you have to behave as if they all are.
And by another measure, which is how many drivers are truly careful (i.e., obeying all the laws to the last detail, including not even 1mph of speeding in residential areas, never “squeezing by” a cyclist, signaling all turns) most drivers are a little bit “stupid”.
The larger stupid is that the national standards and priorities for road design put the free flow of traffic AHEAD of cyclist safety. A road in our neighborhood will be rebuilt in the next year or so. I didn’t pay any attention to this until the 75% design phase, when it had full-width car lanes, space allocated for trees in the median, and sub-5-foot “bike” lanes in some places. And the “professionals” who had chosen to prioritize auto flow over bike safety told us “don’t recommend changes in car lane width, because we won’t”. Thanks, road design professionals, great job!!
You’d think after that commercial where a lady opens a door and it gets cut off by a speeding car, people would be a little more considerate of opening their doors blindly in traffic.
Drivers do look behind them when they open the door. They’re just looking for cars that might kill them when they step out.
Amazing comic, as always! That’s a really interesting new suggestion about using the right hand to open doors, since this automatically involves turning to take a look. I commute by bike most of the time, but drive on occasion, so I’m going to try to implement this.
I worry about doors all the time. I forget what section it is but somewhere in MA state law it says people are required to check the mirror before openning their door when they are parralell parked. I have been doored 5 times. 4 of them were by taxi cabs and 1 I caught on helmet cam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x27sVLGkBPA
There is a reason why I am scared to hell of taxi cabs
Heck, I’m scared of taxis when I’m in my Jeep!
Ethan – If you’ve been doored repeatedly and you worry about doors all the time, that’s a good sign it’s time to change the way you ride. The whole point of this cartoon is to not put yourself in harm’s way. You’re apparently riding too far right, too close to the parked cars and stopped taxi cabs. Ride farther left and dooring will no longer be an issue, because the doors simply won’t be able to reach you. That vigilance you’re spending on the parked cars can be more usefully spent watching for other traffic events. As an added bonus, by riding farther left you have better visibility and you’re more visible to potential pullouts and left crosses. Even better, a more leftward line – controlling the travel lane – forestalls both too-close in-lane passes and right hooks. As a side benefit, since you won’t be constantly worried about being doored and buzzed and right-hooked, you’ll find you enjoy your ride a lot more, and you’ll arrive at your destination with a big smile on your face!