Cycling UK and Uber team up to teach Dutch Reach to drivers and passengers

If we made the offence a crime against a person rather than a motoring offence as in common assault all the way up to manslaughter with the appropriate penalties then motorists might think a little bit more.

Dutch reach won't do shit, it's a waste of time IMHO, just like minimum passing 'laws'. There is ZERO evidence that 'Dutch reach' works and in fact the full methodology of Dutch reach isin itself  flawed.

Telling drivers to open the dor with their right hand, release the door release handle, open the door a small bit with their far hand and look in the crack of the door they've opened, what absolute load of tosh!

Look in the rear-view and wing mirror and THEN look over your shoulder, this is massively greater head rotation than the pathetic 4 degrees extra for using a far hand door opening AND importantly it is a deliberate head movement to look and see! Using your far hand to open a door means the head rotation is simply a physical movement with no thought behind it, it doesn't even mean the person will look or see even, or see more even if there is (a minute) increase in head rotation i

It needs the person exiting to actually want to look AND see (in which case they are already likely to do so). Also the only testing done, which was in Nottingham last year and was limited to the head movement, reaction times and how participants felt about comfort/awareness/safety (to opening a car door) shows that participants in the test that were in the passenger seat had no increase at all in safety awarenes nor head movement whichever hand they used.

So if you think a potential extra 4degree head movement (on the drivers side only) is going to change matters then you're as daft as a brush!

There is a very important aspect of dooring which never seems to get mentioned in these articles, but really must be.

All cycling education curricula teach cyclists that the only reliable way to avoid getting doored is to avoid riding in the door zone. As far as I am aware, no country or region legally requires cyclists to stay so far to the right as to endanger themselves. Even mandatory use laws generally include an exception for safety. While bicycle educators try to reach cyclists with this message, an important learning for motorists is that cyclists are NEVER required to ride in the door zone, even if there is a bike lane there, so you MUST tolerate cyclists in the general travel lane.

There are many reasons that a cyclist may be legally operating in the travel lane, in some cases even in the middle of it. The presence of parked cars without any kind of buffer is one of the biggest reasons. Motorists, EXPECT AND RESPECT cyclists in the travel lane. They’re doing it for their own safety! Don’t squeeze past them, just slow down behind and wait for a safe passing opportunity.

And pass it on to the cyclists in your life: NEVER RIDE IN THE DOOR ZONE!

https://youtu.be/CudJvSbS2aY

There’s one even more practical thing Uber could do and that’s to:

1) automatically calculate when one of their drivers has been speeding by using published speed limits to estimate the minimum legal journey time

2) add a safety reporting feature to the app so that passengers can highlight when an Uber driver is not driving safely.

I use Uber a fair bit and have had to ask a number of drivers to slow down and observe the 20mph limit.

Cycling UK teaming up with Uber?

Top cabbie trolling. 

I tend to think that they are aiming this slightly wrong, don't make it about the cyclist, a lot of them couldn't give a proverbial about cyclists, make it about protecting their precious car from getting its door ripped off by a passing motor vehicle.  Self-interest is always a better persuader than the greater good.

It's about time this country brought back Public Information Films - this film needs to be burned into the retinas of everyone watching prime-time commercial TV, not just Uber pasengers and drivers.

But...Chapeau to Uber for doing this, at least it's a start.