A promising development seems to be afoot in some of the city’s newer taxi cabs, which I noticed for the first time the other day as I was stepping into the shiniest, cleanest cab I’ve ever seen around here.
Oblivious taxi passengers exiting the vehicle have long been a constant menace to cyclists on Valencia and other streets with bike lanes for some time, so let’s hope this addition becomes more widespread and actually encourages clueless folks to check before carelessly flinging open their door!
Seems like a good idea. Hopefully people will actually make use of them.
The thing is, people who exit cabs street-side instead of curb-side are thoughtless, clueless idiots by definition, so hoping that they will check an itty-bitty mirror is like getting fucked by a stranger without a condom and hoping that everybody who fucked him did use a condom.
ummm, this mirror IS on the curbside…
Maybe it’s just your photographic skills, but I’m seeing what looks like a whole traffic lane AND parking spaces between the mirror and the curb. How is that “curbside”? It looks like the cab is stopped in the center lane. But, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that that is, somehow, “curbside” — you’re worried about dooring the “thoughtless, clueless idiots” who ride their bikes on the sidewalks?
OK, on second thought, you are, technically, curbside, despite being nowhere near the curb. I was taking your picture much too literally, in regard to your text. Or maybe it was the other way around.
oh god just stop. the right of the cab is curbside. the left side of the cab is streetside. this is obviously the right side of the cab that IS IN MOTION.
We both posted at 11:46 AM!
It’s not magic dude. Figure it out.
@Crab y Monkey – you’re a dick
Grow up.
worst simile EVA!
Fuck you too.
“Grow up”
Hooey. If there are multiple people in the cab it often makes sense to get out on the non-curb side.
Only in the “thoughtless, clueless idiots” sense of the phrase “makes sense”. It never makes sense to get out in the street and endanger other people, which is what I was getting at in my impulsive comments to Andrew.
Naw, that’s crazytalk.
Is that why all SF cabs have little printed things telling people not to get out in the street?
only thoughtless clueless idiots speak in absolutes. “grow up” and tilt your head around, if you can manage to pull it out of your condom-wearing stranger’s ass.
I was doored on by an idiot cab passenger exiting from the “curb-side” (but nowhere near the curb) IN THE MIDDLE OF 16TH. $50+k of medical expense, months on crutches, and a leg that won’t ever be remotely close to 100%.
It’s not just street-side exit-ers who can be “thoughtless, clueless idiots. Not that such would look at a mirror before leaping out into traffic anyway.
Because tilting your head these days is just getting harder and harder.
What cab company was it?
yellow cab i believe
Why can’t people be happy with an attempt to help situations? I feel as though they could release a pill to cure a disease tomorrow, and people would comment like, “Sure the pill cures [disease], but I can’t have alcohol for 8-hours after taking it. WTF!?”
I was thinking the same thing. Heavens forbid someone actually tries to proactively address a problem.
If you get doored, chances are that you weren’t riding defensively. That means paying attention to your surroundings, and giving cabs that are pulled over a wide berth. That’s just common sense.
But I’ve found (as a pedestrian as well as occasional driver) that common sense is too much to ask of most cyclists in the Mission.
You simply don’t exit from street-side. You scoot over to the curbside door if there’s more than one of you. Why is this so difficult? Just eat less pork belly, chocolate and bacon and you’ll manage.
And why don’t cabs pull over more towards the curb, and still allow room to open the curbside door? They often just stop in the middle of the lane. I don’t get it.
Naw. Plenty of times it makes sense to get out on the street side.
Nope. Not ever. Get out street side = get run over. Or get run over X2 (by Muni). Or door bikes.
Any number of things might happen that would suck for you, or for someone else.
Why would you risk the possible consequences, to yourself or to someone else, unless you are a psychopath?
Naw, that’s just crazytalk.
Naw you’re just wrong again, but as usual, too stubborn to accept the fact that some other blog-common-tater-as-a-raison-d’etre-dude is righter than you.
Naw.
* San Francisco has lots of one-way streets so “curbside” – more precisely perhaps the non-traffic side – can mean either side of a vehicle, or even both sides on a narrow street.
* It is not clear to me if there are mirrors getting installed on both sides.
* I imagine that the learning curve for these – because they are very non-standard – is very steep. Passengers will use them rarely, probably for a long time.
* I smell Lawyers try to deflect liability.
* How come we have not heard much if anything about this until now?
* Does this work in other cities?
* Is there some legal or formal problem with making the taxi drivers responsible not just for stopping in as safe a location as possible BUT also controlling the doors, as they do in buses? I know that sometimes – very rarely – cabbies abduct fares but there can be some kind of emergency exit provision.
* As some readers might know, doorings of cyclists are very rare in the Netherlands. This is because on most busy & fast streets there is full separation between bikes and motorized vehicles, AND also because drivers are taught to look over their left – traffic-side – shoulder while also – this is key! – opening the door with their anti-traffic side hand.
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We Out Here says:
January 10, 2013 at 6:02 am
All these google niggas asgett’n Raped.