At the very end of the video, you can see a common situation: a car waits at an intersection to turn right. Nothing seems to block its way. Actually, in the US, cars seem to turn right even when the light is red, for instance.

Anyway: what they show is that, just behind the car, just at its right, there is a cyclist. But it is in the dead spot. That cyclist is most likely going steady because the path is clear: cars were waiting at the intersection, but what was blocking them just passed, so you can move along. My experience is that cars always forget to signal they are turning, and they never think about check the deadspot.

This is how most cyclists die.

It was notoriously how the first death involving a Vélib, (Paris’ free bike scheme); it actually happened meters away from where I was at the time.

More importantly, this is something that most car drivers don’t care to check: they always blame the cyclist for “showing up out of nowhere” and usually do so violently. They completely neglect that the don’t have the right of way at all, nor that it would make no sense for them to pretend to have it if the vehicle was anything else than a bicycle: I’ve seen them always apologise profusely when they caught a motorbike in the same situation.

I was living in a very busy street (the largest in Paris, actually) where there are dozens of such intersections, and it used to happen to me everyday. By ‘happen’, I mean that I had to bang on the car side to prevent the blow daily; there was visible damage to either the car or the bike weekly. I had to drop my bike at the last minute, letting it be crunched by the car wheel, or jump on the car front/engine to avoid being crushed almost every other month. That’s why I rapidly switched from my beloved bike to Vélib, to be able to afford such frequent accidents. I was hit badly twice, fell on the macadam both time: the first time, my front teeth cut my lip open (still have a scar, and one front tooth is still visibly broken in half); the second time, I busted my knee and couldn’t walk for a month. I have less of a limp now, but I can predict the weather quite accurately; and I can’t play tennis, basketball, ski, skate or do anything remotely fun, really.

In a dense city, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, except never cross a street: cars would come out and turn at any time when the light is green to cross. You are inches away from the car (because that’s how much space city planning grants you) and a ton of steel is going full Bruce-Lee finger-length punch on you. It’s very hard to describe the feeling it gives you: imagine a car willingly crushing you to death. That’s about as reassuring at that. It’s unexpected, sudden and overwhelmingly violent.

This is why cyclists insist one staying one meter away from deadly machines as much as they can. Most drivers reaction is “I didn’t touch you! Why do you care?!” -- including when the bicycle wheel was torn under the car front wheel. Taxi drivers are particularly violent in that circumstance -- and their parent company don’t care, at all, when you mention the problem, and a need for training.

Out of principle, I refused to yield and stop cycling around: I felt I was right, and should be respected for it. Once you’ve experience Paris with a bicycle (and I had for a decade) walking in painfully slow, metro stinks and driving is absurd on every level.

I’ve asked several Police officers to do something, from warning, surveilling the most common intersection; offer training; all those I talked to (including a Commissioner’ aid) felt clueless and said that they only thing they can do is scrape away the leftovers… I never dared to ask how much gore was in those. Official statistics purposely downplay the issue. I’ve challenged every local ‘Open data’ initiative to let me cross-reference hospital, morgue and police reports and sort death by vehicle driven and exact location — in vain.

Someone in my family worked on car electronics, and I did challenge him to implement a side radar on the right side to prevent it -- his reaction was the usual, dis-heartening reaction from all drivers and car makers: it doesn’t threaten people inside the car, why should I care? I’ve called this the “I have a tank! Fuck You!” mentality.

Notice how until couple of years ago, not a single security feature, or even measurement was about people outside the car? That’s how you ended up with a ton of reinforced metal with narrower and narrower windows, up to the point now where
standard cars are actually stronger than the first armored tanks.

I have banged on car side windows at the last minute as much as I could, but my life remained in constant danger. After seeing that the Police was powerless, I have investigated the idea that in this particular situation, my life was expressly at stake; no public authority could do something. I even asked them to sign affidavit confirming that was what they told me. Therefore, I believed I was left in a state of nature, i.e. a legal void in principled law systems, meaning should be allowed to defend myself using deadly force. I had started to learn how to use a firearm, and working on a campaign saying that cyclists were now armed, would not hesitate to shoot in that particular case. I considered some scary premiss around the idea that the blood would stop being ours, and start being those of the actual culprits.

I considered the very likely scenario that would lead me in jail for manslaughter, i.e. for a decade. As someone who had taught classes at the local security jail, I knew what that meant: daily, violent anal rape; possibly forced drug addition if I wasn’t cooperative.

This is something that made me have nightmares for years. Imagine having bruises from living your worst dream on a regular basis, and contemplating rape for a decade as your only way out.

The friend who showed me how to shoot noticed I was more scared of the gun that beginners usually are; I was more scared after. I mentioned why, or rather, I said that I wasn’t sure I could stop a car swerving by killing the driver -- which was true; that just wasn’t the main reason holding a gun scared me. He thankfully pointed how far I had gone -- ignoring the main extent of it.

I realised how this had repeatedly triggered very problematic psychiatric issues over the years. It’s strange and yet very empowering to have a paranoia directly triggered by a perfectly rational inference from regular lucid experience.

This is the actual reason why I left Paris, the city I spent my life in, and whom I will always love. I have swore to not come back until taxi drivers, by far the worst offenders, are gone.

That’s why I’m so supportive of Uber, other similar services, and Google Self driving cars: there offer a working solution. I can recognise the tiny license Uber cars have, and they have consistently respected road rules. I never considered owning a car myself, or even moving around in such a violent mean of transport. But those became the only ways for me to come back home without having crippling, yet rational, nightmares.

That last five seconds, that “side death”, has been a haunting companion for years. This exact situation, so let me answer your question precisely: a car turns right without checking there is a bike there in the blind-spot (one that actually has the right of way, and more importantly a body about to be crushed).

Detecting it, and waiting for the bike to pass first might be some engineers’ couple of month of work, but it is far more to me.

I have never mentioned this to anyone. I just though the discrepancy between what that means to cyclist and your misunderstanding mattered.