Sketch by John Liu for BikePortland.

This is BP subscriber John Liu’s second article. The first one was about right-hooks.

This series of posts is meant to share riding skills for people who want to take extra precautions against drivers who are distracted, careless, aggressive, inexperienced, or simply fallible humans and for drivers who don’t ever want to hurt or kill a cyclist through poor driving.

Don’t read this post if you want to know a cyclist’s or driver’s “legal responsibility” or you want to know what cycling “should be” like in an ideal world. As bicycle operators, we can ignore everything I write about here, and we may still be legally “in the right”. And dead.

About me: 40+ years of riding bikes in cities, 30+ years of driving in cities, 10 years year-round bike commuting in Portland, licensed driver with motorcycle endorsement, zero bicycle-car collisions as either a cyclist or a driver.
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(Photo © J. Maus)

[Note: Based on the large number of helpful responses to a reader’s request for help back in December, I thought I’d make this a more regular feature. I’ll try to do an “Ask BikePortland” post at least once a month. If you have a burning bike question — whether it has to do with product recommendations or legal advice — drop us a line. Between myself and this excellent community of readers, I’m sure we can get you an answer.]

This one comes from reader N.M., who was unfortunately the victim of a dooring on N. Williams:
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