Mr Aydogdu, 32, of Hindhead, Surrey, said he had only opened his car door a little to see if anyone was coming.

Isn’t that what door mirrors are for? I drive a van with no rear windows/interior mirror and I manage just fine.

I’ve been car-doored (is that the official term). The driver literally flung his door open as I was just about alongside. Bloody hell it hurt!!! The corner of the door went right into my shoulder. There was a LOT of swearing!!

Well he is not going to say he did not give a shit and swung it open blind hitting him is he

The glass was so dark he could not see out of it- reduced visibility to 17% which must be illegal surely? and is dangerous as this incident has shown

Mr Harding was riding in a bus lane with a bus travelling behind him and was crushed after coming off his bicycle.

‘No winners’
Witnesses on the bus said Mr Aydogdu opened his door directly into the path of the cyclist on 6 August last year.

Mr Harding was cycling in a bus lane with a bus travelling behind him
Mr Aydogdu, who admitted opening the door without using his mirror, told police he thought Mr Harding had lost control of the cycle.

FFS it is his fault

The judge, Mr Justice Saunders, told the jury: “This is a case where there are no winners. Everyone is a loser.”

The jury took just over an hour to clear Mr Aydogdu.

Sam Harding’s father Keith said there was a “gap in the law”.

Speaking to the BBC, he said: “Obviously the jury didn’t think it was serious enough to convict him of manslaughter.”

He added: “The law needs to find something that is commensurate.”

Pretty sure the car driver with the [ I assume]illegal windows whose actions killed a cyclist has just won that encounter and also paid no price whatsoever 😕

Involuntary manslaughter charge???

Didn’t take long. Cyclists fault eh?

Didn’t say it was his fault. Just that I agree that cyclists should avoid the door-zone for that very reason (and speaking as someone that has been doored himself)

The fault however, lies very clearly with the driver who did not look.

On the subject I thought this was a good tip (obviously left hand for UK drivers):

–from http://bikeyface.com/2012/12/11/the-doors/

Apparently, the bus had CCTV fitted. One would have hoped that would have shown the whole incident.

Looking at some of the previous reporting, it seems that first claim was that a child had opened the door. When that was later resolved the driver then claimed he had only opened it a little. The witnesses say he opened it all the way.

A mate of mine got car-doored the other week, luckily he was riding his Bandit 1200 so it destroyed the door without being much impeded.

This, incidentally, is one of the various reasons that allowing motorbikes in bus lanes improves cycle safety- people are less inclined to step in front of/open doors into/drive out in front of motorbikes because they do more damage in return. (and why the CTC are killing cyclists by opposing it.)

So we should let motorbikes into bus lanes cos they go fast and do a lot of damage when they hit things? Well it’s an interesting theory… 😀

No theory- well proven in the real world. Most notably in the UK, TFL ran a series of studies which showed an 11.6% reduction in collision stats for bicycles when the buslanes were shared with motorbikes. Various reasons were put forward but the most convincing one was that people just don’t bother looking for bikes, but they do look for motorbikes.

You’d reasonably expect an increase in pushbike vs ptw incidents but it wasn’t a serious factor, and far less than the reduction in ped vs pushbike and car vs pushbike.

The evidence was compelling enough that they opened most London bus lanes to motorbikes despite the CTC and LCC’s opposition.

(the question was asked, why were they in opposition despite the facts? And again, most likely explanation- PTWs are competition for their market.)