It is not enough.

Bikes. Cars. Doors. Trouble.

I have never actually been doored (this feels dangerous to say), thanks entirely to luck and the compulsive assumption that every car will door me.

I have been nearly doored many times. It is inevitable.

More often than not, the doorer says sorry.

I have never been able to accept their apologies.

And I have wondered, for a while now, why that's so. They do something wrong; they apologize. Shouldn't we then be square?

But... What if your partner cheated on you? What if a crazy guy pushed you onto the subway tracks? Sometimes sorry isn't enough.

In this case, it could be, maybe. But the doorers say sorry the same way they'd say it if their bag bumped into my elbow on the subway. It's an "Oops, sorry." To them, it's no big deal, a minor intrusion into public space, carry on.

What they entirely fail to realize is that it is a very big deal indeed. It is not an inconvenience. I won't accept an "Oops, sorry" because I am waiting for an "Oh my god I am so sorry I will never do that again I can't believe I just did that I am so so sorry."

You think it's overkill? Consider the consequences of a dooring:

When you, as a cyclist, see a door fly open ahead of you (or any obstacle suddenly appear in your lane) your immediate reaction is to swerve away from it. Which means, by default, you are swerving into the traffic that is coming up behind you, that you cannot see. Maybe it's a motorcycle. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's a bus. And just like that, you're in front of it and under it.

Of course maybe you can skip over that knee-jerk reaction. Maybe you've thought about it enough, and the timing is just right enough, that you can slam on your brakes instead. In which case you a) slam your bike up into your crotch and fall and either crash into the door or fall into traffic anyway, or b) go flying over your handlebars and fall and either crash into the door or fall into traffic anyway. Either way, there is going to be a lot of asphalt burn and broken bones.

To put it simply: Dooring a cyclist means you can very well either severely injure or kill them. It is not an oops offense. Sorry.

RECIPE: Tea Liqueur, because it's nice to have something smooth to sip of an evening.