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Being seen
Choose a road position that keeps you out of the door zone and in view, and ride on the working assumption that a driver has not seen you.
1Look
The gap that is not a gap
The door zone
A rider on a road hugging a line of parked cars, close enough that an opening door would reach them, with a driver's head visible through the rear window of one of the parked cars.
That rider is doing the thing that feels safest, which is getting as far from the moving traffic as they can. Look at what they have put themselves next to instead.
2The idea
Start from the assumption that they have not seen you
The instruction from the people who train e-bike riders is blunt: pretend car and truck drivers do not see you, and keep 360 degrees of awareness. Not because drivers are careless, but because it is the only assumption that costs you nothing when it turns out to be wrong.
In one hospital series of e-bike and scooter crashes, about half were collisions with a vehicle. That is the biggest single category of the lot, and it is the one that road position, speed and timing genuinely move.
3The idea
Where on the road you ride
In Illinois you ride with traffic, in the same direction, keeping as close as is practicable and safe to the right-hand curb or edge — and the law writes in exceptions for when the far right is not the safe place to be.
Practicable and safe is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Alongside parked cars, the safe line is further out, outside the door zone. A door opens into exactly the space a rider was told to hug, and there is no reaction time in it at all.
4Build it
Find your line
The line past the parked cars
A street with cars parked along the right. Drag the rider's line left and right; the arc a door swings through is drawn over the top of it, and so is the space left for a driver coming past.
There is a line that clears the doors and still leaves room to be passed. Find it, then notice how far out it sits.
5The idea
The part nobody has adjusted to yet
A driver waiting to pull out of a driveway is judging a gap. They are judging it against how fast a bicycle usually closes on them, because that is the judgement they have been making since long before you were riding.
You are not closing at bicycle speed, and nothing about the machine tells them that. From a hundred metres away it looks like a bike. That mismatch is why junctions and driveways matter more on this machine than on the one you learned on.
6Decide
A car is waiting to pull out of a driveway ahead, and the driver is looking your way.
Pick one to carry on.
7The idea
Tell them what you are about to do
Illinois requires a hand signal 100 feet before you turn, with a set arm position for left, right and stop. A hundred feet is further back than most riders signal from, and it is meant to be seen and then acted on, not announced as you are already swinging across.
The rest of it is simply being predictable. Adjust your speed early, adjust your position early, hold a straight line, and be courteous and cooperative about it. A driver can plan around a rider doing an obvious thing. Nobody can plan around a rider improvising.
8Find them
Where should you expect to be missed?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Say it
The sentence for every driveway
Say it under your breath, every time
“They have not seen me yet.”
Say it at driveways and junctions until you no longer need to say it. It is not nerves. It is just the assumption that costs nothing when it turns out to be wrong.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Walk the first block of your usual route and find the door zone. Stand in the road where a rider would ride, then open the door of your own family's car and see how far into that space it reaches.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Assume they have not seen you. Then ride where they would have to.
Next lesson: The 6-to-9 window