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Comment by notapenny | Hacker News Reader

For those to lazy to read, it's basically opening the car door with the hand furthest from the door. This automatically turns your shoulder/eyesight and makes it easier to look for passing cyclists.

Its taught as a good practice in driving schools in the Netherlands because we have so many cyclists around. Making it a law though and fining people 1000 pounds for opening their door with the wrong hand? Feels a bit excessive.

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Which isn't what's happening. The fine is for injuring somebody with your car door, not for failing to follow the officially approved method of opening it.

But you'd never get that impression from most of the reporting around this. Deliberately misleading outrage fodder in the headlines, followed ten paragraphs later by a more honest explanation of what's happening, which directly contradicts the original headline. It's pretty disgraceful, but the pervasiveness of it smacks of some lobbying outfit feeding copy to overworked journos.

Yep. To further contextualise this, the Highway Code is a set of guidelines which summarises good practice to avoid breaking actual laws and be seen as a considerate driver. There is a law against driving a vehicle in a dangerous condition, for example, and the Highway Code's suggestion you check the lights and brakes work every time you use the car will tend to reduce the chances of you being fined for driving your car in a dangerous condition. It'd probably be a good idea to do carry out those checks regardless of whether driving a vehicle in a dangerous condition or not. But it's neither necessary nor sufficient to carry out these checks to avoid being fined.

Thanks for clearing that up, had to look around a bit but this clears it up

https://road.cc/content/news/press-misrepresents-highway-cod... "It is already an offence to open a car door, or cause or permit it to be opened, so as to cause injury, punishable by a maximum fine of £1,000."

That makes more sense.

I thinks it's a little weird. Denmark has cyclists all around as well, and cars. We're just taught not to open the door without checking for traffic (be it cars, bikes or pedestrians). You're taught that as a kid by your parents.

It's pretty obvious that when you park anywhere that's no a booth or your driveway you need to look before opening your door. I honestly don't understand that this is a problem. Do people else where constantly open their doors into traffic? Just "WHAM, door gets pulled off by a passing car". If you're not used to driving places with bikelanes I can maybe see it being a problem in the passanger side of the car.

I realize the article is about the UK, but yes, people on the US open the doors into traffic because they never would consider a cyclist is approaching. Car is default, lanes are huge, and most drivers don't even imagine cycling for transportation.

Cycling infrastructure in the US is typically a painted line along the gutter or parking lane, if we're lucky to get that.

Because of that I'll often ride in the car lane even if there is a bike gutter, because it is so dangerous to ride next to people pulling in and out and opening their doors.

I dream of visiting the Netherlands or Copenhagen to cycle one day.

It's a problem whether you were aware of it or not.

>Do people else where constantly open their doors into traffic?

If by traffic you mean cars, then they have a much more obvious noise and appearance in mirrors. Bikes are easier to miss.

I think the main difference is that bikes generally ride closer to the parked cars than cars. But yeah, looking before making any movement on the road seems like a no brainer.

>ride closer to the parked cars than cars

Not really. It's the same - as close as a few finger widths.

Many American cities' roads are absolutely gigantic, compared to in Europe. And I'm not just talking about their multi-lane freeways - this goes for residential streets too.

To pick a city street at random, look at [1] - a road so quiet you can't see a single moving car in either direction, and it's wide enough you could fit five vehicles abreast.

Americans don't pass within a few finger widths of a parked car, because they can leave a six foot gap just as easily.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@37.438309,-122.1449024,3a,75y...

As a Dutch person, I was never taught this, I can see it is good practice but we just don't do it. All we do is check over our shoulders before we open the door because we know there can be a cyclist. Why? Because we are all cyclists so we know it can happen...

I can't remember getting taught this method in my Dutch Driving lessons (ca 2008), and funnily enough I don't even know with what hand I open the door, I'll have to consciously pay attention next time.

However I'm very aware of checking the mirror before opening the car in parallel parking situations, as I have been on the receiving end of a car door while biking before I even was allowed to drive.

Interestingly, Netherland does not make it mandatory, and the government recently warned that in some circumstances, it might actually be more dangerous: https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/6180537/autodeur-met-verste-han... (Dutch)

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