Doored in Union Square

https://danconnor.com/posts/541542fd45b74d6952000001/on_the_video_in_which_i_am_doored_by_a_taxi

(Note: the video is no longer online but a screen clip is on another page.)

I see a lot of people who comment here discussing fault. Fault and crash prevention are not the same. I’ll take crash prevention any time over being able to point the finger of blame from a hospital bed — though in this case crash prevention would unfortunately have required either of two things:

* riding at 5 mph or less to be able to stop before striking the door, largely removing the speed advantage of bicycling over walking

* or to operate according to the normal rules of the road and pass the cab on the street side, with enough clearance to avoid a door there — but if the NYC police are ticketing cyclists for doing this, as Dan Connor says, and judges are holding bicyclists at fault for it, in the face of compelling evidence of danger like that from the video, then the only hope is an appeal to overturn the judge’s ruling (expensive, uncertain) or repeal of the mandatory bike lane law (a long drawn-out process).

Also very unfortunately, bicycling advocates and governments are busy painting, and now walling, bicyclists into smaller corners. The “protected” bike lane where the pedestrians walked out near the start of the video is a fine example of that. That bike lane is bad enough. I’ve ridden in Manhatten myself and I think that crosstown bicycling could be well-served by converting every 4th or 5th street into a bicycle boulevard (only local motor traffic). North-south traffic is a tougher issue. The 9th Avenue bikeway (10 feet wide, one-way) works pretty well in my experience but its cheap imitation on 2nd Avenue is a gauntlet. More about NYC bicycling here: http://john-s-allen.com/galler…