Risks of Door Zone Bike Lanes

[Jayeson]

While the danger of door zone bike lanes seem obvious to me and even in the risk of collision is unknown it seems unnecessarily foolish to ride in one. I see it as being akin to an Indiana Jones tunnel journey. I don't imagine anyone would ride bike lanes if arrows, spears or blades were being thrust into the lane, even if the frequency was assumed to be low. Such imagery would make a great PSA video.

Today I stumbled across this video which gives some accident rates for Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShgMoWwUMM . As I understand it, most bike lanes in Melbourne are door zone lanes. I think it stems from curb lanes just happening to be the right width to stripe a narrow bike lane in the door zone. In some examples I have seen stripe the parking areas only. According to the news report, paramedics are responding to 5 door zone incidents per week.

I'm hoping someone does a proper study in Victoria as it seems there is a lot of good data to be found. In the mean time, Bicycle Victoria have some usage stats here: http://www.bv.com.au/bike-futures/10551/ . The number of cyclists riding facilities is given in thousands per day, that is, the odds of a Melbourne cyclist having a door zone incident is 1 in a few thousand each trip. If that is even remotely accurate it is scary stuff. On average, every regular commuter in Melbourne should expect a few serious door zone accidents during their working life. I don't know how many doors the average Melbourne commuter passes but it seems reasonable to me that the accident rate might be as low as 1 accident per 100,000 parked cars passed or on the order of 1 per 1000 miles of parked cars. For reference, motor vehicle death rates are measured in deaths per 100 million miles.

I'm sure the statement that the infrastructure is not to blame sounded wrong to many of us. The follow on statement that the problem is the attitude of folks opening doors seems ridiculous to me given the accident rates. Even a 10x reduction in accidents would still leave an unacceptable accident rate. The only reasonable action I see is to get bicycles out of the door zone.

Jayeson

[caffrey]

Jayeson,

Thanks for this!

Doorings are under-reported in the US. But if you read forums from cities with lots of door zone bike lanes, you find it's frighteningly common.

Yeah, saying infrastructure is not to blame is just absurd. They stripe bike space into the most hazardous part of the road, the part of the road educators have been trying for decades to teach cyclists to stay away from. Aaaargh!

It's unethical to lead novice cyclists into a hazard they aren't aware of.

It's idiotic for cyclists (like the woman in the video) to ride where they know they are at risk and then expect other people to look out for them. Yes, it is the motorists responsibility to look before opening a door, but people get distracted, they forget, cyclists move faster than they think, sometimes faster than they can see. The cyclist is the one who's going to get killed or seriously injured. The motorist will get a ticket and be liable for your medical expenses, congratulations. People just have to WANT to be victims to put themselves in that place knowingly.

[Mighk]

Step A: promote bicycle facility next to parked cars, ignoring concerns from actual bicyclists that imperfect human beings will open car doors into said facility

Step B: build facility anyway

Step C: when bicyclists are doored by imperfect human beings in cars, blame the imperfect human beings for being imperfect, not the facility