It's both surprising and great to see that so many people on a car/fan forum also ride bicycles a lot.
It is illegal to open a car door unless it is safe to do so. There is a corpse to prove it was unsafe in this incident. If the Toronto motorist is not fined, then motorists have absolutely no right to expect cyclists to ride closer than the length of an open door from parked cars.
It comes as no surprise to long-time urban cyclists that almost without exception, cyclists CANNOT get the authorities to take measures against motorists who endanger or harm cyclists. Just go look at cycling websites. They have entire forums about this. (
http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=8 ) It is prejudice, plain and simple. And when you add in the positive values of cycling, and the fact cyclists help pay for policing, the injustice is obscene. I could relate the most outrageous instances of cyclists being bullied and the police handling it as though the cyclist was the problem. Not surprisingly, this also leads to some cyclists taking things into their own hands when endangered or hit by a motorist.
Motorist behavior toward cyclists often carries a deliberate message to GET OUT OF MY WAY. Those same motorists then park and open their doors in front of the cyclists who have been pushed to the margins of the roads. The obvious irony is completely lost on the motorists' carbon-monoxide soaked brains.
You may be interested to know that in some European countries, there is a reverse onus of guilt in accidents between motorists and cyclists. It is up to the motorist to prove the cyclist was to blame, and if they can't, the motorist is at fault. And the motorist is almost always found at fault, especially incidents involving very young or very old cyclists. The rationale is that motorists should anticipate cyclists to do unexpected things. While I don't entirely agree with the rationale, I feel there should be a mechanism to force motorists to be especially careful about pedestrians and cyclists due to the motorists being both well protected and the ones throwing all the weight around. That mechanism is some form of reverse onus.
I can't state this strongly enough. Walking and cycling are important parts of a badly needed move toward sustainable lifestyles, and people aren't going to walk and cycle until it's reasonably safe to do so. Odd, but the police thus have a role in climate change.
I remember when we lived in Europe around 1960, while pulling into a parking spot in a Dutch city, my father bumped a cyclist in the adjacent bicycle lane. We paid up on the spot for the cyclist's damages because we knew we would be found at fault regardless of the circumstances.
Last fall, I ran into a suddenly opened car door, on the curb side of the car. Fortunately I was aware of the possiblility and was riding at reduced speed. I was unlucky to run into the rather hard and sharp end of the door, but I was lucky to land on grass, avoiding concrete and phone poles. While I expected a 50/50 allocation of blame, I was found 0% to blame. I had a misapprehension about the legality of passing on the right. Regardless of what motorists think about cyclists passing on the right, the fine print of the law is that it is legal to do so even in the same lane if there is room and it can be done safely. So I ended up being offered by ICBC a tidy sum of money for a messed up knuckle. I didn't have to pay for the motorist's damaged door. I turned down offers for my bike's damage, since they weren't worth the paperwork.
I felt validated by the fact my existence as cyclist was recognized for a change. At least by the insurance company. The police (Burnaby RCMP) refused to even take a report. Probably so accident statistics don't reveal that there might be a problem. The police won't do anything unless there is an injury, and they say there is not an injury unless an ambulance attends. So if you're struck while cycling, lay there until an ambulance comes, regardless of the immediate cost to society. That's just STUPID, but cyclists did not create these rules.
