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Comment by sandover | Hacker News Reader

Don't ride in the door zone. Don't let cars make you ride in the door zone. Take the car lane instead.

I've gone 15,000 miles safely in dense urban environments because I am heads-up about the 2 main threats: intersections, and the door zone.

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Just be prepared to be ticketed by overzealous NYPD cops.

http://gothamist.com/2017/04/28/nypd_bike_lane_tickets.php

> Don't ride in the door zone. Don't let cars make you ride in the door zone. Take the car lane instead.

Please don’t do this. During the time that I commuted on a bicycle, it was very frustrating when other cyclists didn’t follow the rules of the road (zipping through stop signs is another example). It causes resentment in drivers. This leads to aggressive behavior towards cyclists.

I don't know the rules of the road for NYC. Where I'm from though, you are supposed to take the lane. Quite frankly, it's insane not to take the lane, since people think they can pass you in their car, while staying in the same lane.

Traffic lanes are rarely wide enough for two vehicles to travel side by side with sufficient space between them.

For example, on a street with 10 foot wide lanes, a 6 foot wide car would have a margin of 2 feet on either side of it and 4 feet between it and a car in the adjacent lane. For buses that are 8.5 feet wide, they have about 0.75 feet on each side and 1.5 feet between them and another bus in an adjacent lane.

A cyclist is about 2 feet wide at a minimum. To have a 2 feet of space on each side, they need a lane that's 6 feet wide. To have 0.75 feet on each side, they need a lane that's 3.5 feet wide.

For the car and bus examples above, neither can leave enough space in the lane while they're in it for a cyclist. So the only way to safely pass one is to change lanes.

In most (all?) states in the US cyclists are legally allowed to take the lane when it is unsafe to stay to the right.

The UVC (Uniform Vehicle Code) that most states base their traffic laws on states that bicycles do not have to keep as far right as practicable when the lane they're in is a substandard width lane. They further go on to define a substandard width lane as one where a cyclist and another vehicle cannot travel safely side by side with both vehicles within the lane.

You are mistaken about what the rules are in most states. To take one example, in California, you own the lane and cars cannot pass unless they can give you three feet of clearance.

http://ktla.com/2013/09/23/gov-brown-signs-law-requiring-car...

>Please don’t do this.

Please do. Being doored isn't something you want to have happen to you; and can have pretty life changing results if you're unlucky.

If you're in a car and you can't pass if someones riding out of the door zone then you probably don't have room to pass anyway.

I don't care how much resentment it causes that should never result in aggressive behavior towards cyclists.

As if one cyclists behavior should or could influence a vehicle operators behavior towards other people sharing the road. Utterly ridiculous. Anybody that is not capable of keeping their emotions bottled up to the point where they will take out their frustrations on unprotected bags of fluid from within a ton+ of armor should be relieved of their license.

If you can't safely pass your place is clear: behind the other traffic.

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