First law of driving:
1/ All other road users are dangerous morons.
My driving instructer taught me that. Learn it and live it if you want to learn to drive and survive.
Pretend I used correct punctuation in the post above me. 
The golden rule of travelling on the road, be it in a car, on a bike, a scooter, as a pedestrian or using a snowmobile: Every other person is your enemy.
I don’t mean that in a hostile way - it’s just thatyou can never relax and expect other people in traffic to behave concistently, let alone follow the laws and rules.You will get cut off by someone who decides they need to overtake you before using the exit ramp, people will walk out in front of your car, some idiot willcome driving around the corner, when you have a green light and walk tocross the streets.
Knowing that everyone is an enemy will keep you vigilant and lessen your frustration, since you’re not gonna get upset or disappointed because people behave like assholes.
[aside]
I find American drivers to be a lot more considerate than European. However, assholes are everywhere even if there are fewer of them on the roads in the U.S.
Once you’ve been around here a little longer, you’ll come to learn that there is a specific subgroup here in the Pit that makes mountains out of molehills simply as an excuse to show-off their ability to create “clever profanity” and to generally just profanely rant while describing people.
It’s kind of stupid, but you’ll get used to it; there’s worse things.
Hey, that’s just like home!
I sympathise with the OP. The same thing happened to me once, only worse. A double-parked driver decided to dart out of his car as the traffic was coming. Of course I wasn’t expecting that and my passenger-side rear-view mirror hit his door and came off. I parked (by the fricking curb, which was frigging empty anyways) and he was already back in his car and ready to leave. He decided it was my fault, and since his beat-up car suffered no damage off he went. I almost reported him, but it would aggravate me more than it would him and repairing the mirror was less than my insurance deductible. I had a crappy day I tell you. I still get cranky thinking about it.
So if the OP decides to find the lady and beat her up with a large codfish I am in.
For what it’s worth here are what the Australian Road Rules have to say on the topic;
Although clearly the OP is not from Australia and the entire above post is a complete waste of time. Sorry.
She’s not whinning, she was obviously terrified. Don’t you remember learning to drive? The sickening truth that for the first time in your life, it was well within reason that a relatively minor fuck up–not even a fuck up, just a less-than-perfect reaction speed to someone else’s fuck-up-- on your part could KILL someone or even yourself? The first time that is driven home is one hell of an adrenalin reaction, and I think that that is what happened here. When you are having that sort of reaction–shaking hands, plunging stomach, chills–and then someone yells at you and tries to (unjustly) blame you–when you yourself are frantically trying to figure out whethre or not you were at fault and you are pretty sure you weren’t–it’s going to make you excedingly angry. That’s a reasonable response for a reasonable person under those extreme circimstances. It speaks to her maturity that the OP didn’t react outwardly at the scene, but came home and vented.
This makes no sense. If you were to drive at a speed such that you could ALWAYS avoid someone throwing open a door into traffic, most urban streets would slow to a crawl. Someone can throw open a door literally a foot in front of your car and you’ll hit it before your foot has a chance to even move towards the brake. If you are driving in the only lane, and the lane is narrow enough that you WILL hit an open car door, then the only way to achieve what you want would be to drive through all such areas at literally walking speed.
What you’re talking about is defensive driving - being alert to things like people getting ready to open car doors and trying to move to the outside of the lane or open up a spot in the lane beside you by adjusting speed. These are good driving habits, but that doesn’t mean you have a responsibility to be able to avoid every possible accident when someone does something utterly stupid.
The same thing happens with bicycles. Bicycles ride along the side of the road, and its our job in cars to avoid them, give them some room, and slow down when passing them. But if a bicyclist suddenly veers into your path while you are passing, well, that’s the bicyclist’s fault. Because there’s not a damned thing you can do about it if someone just randomly veers in front of your car.
FTR, Lefty, your definition of “double-parked” was the one I grew up with, too. (I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, where live the most polite drivers I’ve ever met; I sure do miss them.) I learned the definition that everyone else uses once I moved to Baltimore.
Having retracted my comments twice now and apologized once, having explained the roots of my confusion, I invite you to read the rest of the thread.
Daniel
Nothing particularly constructive to add; I just wanted to mention that I have only ever heard “double parked” to mean what Daniel originally thought it meant (“occupying two legal spaces at once”), like so. Mayhaps we’ve found the next “…another thin(g/k) coming”?
Absolutely. I’m normally pretty mild mannered. However, my language after some near collisions could scare sailors out of a strip bar. The situation for the OP had to be especially terrifying. She’s new on the road, doesn’t have instinctual reactions yet, hasn’t developed that 6th sense about what other drivers/pedestrians are going to do, and here she nearly kills someone through no fault of her own and got yelled at.
DSotF, sorry you had a rough driving lesson. It does get better. There will always be stupid assholes, but you do learn to anticipate some of the stupidity with experience.
To chime in on the double-parking hijack: I’ve always used and heard it for parking in a traffic lane, next to the cars legally parked at the curb.
I’m not excusing the woman who nearly got hit for her stupidity in double-parking and opening her door into oncoming traffic. It does seem possible, though, that her swearing at the OP was a hysterical reaction to realizing that she’d almost been killed or badly hurt. She may well have gone home as badly shaken as DSofF, and cursed herself for her own folly when she’d had time to think it over.
Then again, people who double-park are selfish twits, so I’m probably wrong.
Huh. I wonder if this is a regional thing?
Daniel
I thought you were saying that it would still be the case had the car not been double-parked, but merely parked along the side of the road normally. I’m saying that even in such a case, it’s STILL the responsibility of the person opening their door to not throw it open into traffic, because there’s no way you can go slow enough to always be able to avoid the door. And what if she had thrown it open in front of a bicyclist? There are quite a few bicycle accidents from exactly that cause.
Anyone who throws their door open into a traffic lane without checking to make sure the road is clear deserves a pitting.
DSotF, I don’t see how you were in the wrong at all. The double-parked lady was a moron - a dangerous one at that - as was your instructor for screaming at you. I would have let a stream of obscenities fly if I was in your situation and I’ve been driving a long time. Learning to drive is a very anxious time and sometimes you just need to vent when things go awry. Things will get better (as well as worse), just try to have fun!
Also, I see no need to apologize for your words to prudes like cosmosdan. It’s The Pit, foul language should not come as a surprise.
In such a case, my position (modified by previous posts) is that it is both the woman’s responsibility not to throw her door open, and Dark’s responsibility to keep an eye out for folks doing such things and take the steps I mentioned–aka defensive driving–to avoid hitting someone who throws their door open.
Again, there are circumstances where a person may open their door, get it hit, and not be responsible for it. If there’s a vehicle parked behind them that blocks their view of traffic, they might be unable to see the traffic behind them (more a problem for those who drive small vehicles). If the oncoming traffic is speeding, there might likewise be a problem.
But–and again, modified by previous posts–I’d now say that the legal responsibility for any ensuing accident would probably lie primarily if not wholly with the person who opened their door into traffic. I’d suspect that in an accident that ensued, both parties would get part of the blame; but I’m not sure what the law would be under such circumstances.
Daniel
You could call it a regional thing if you don’t live near a big city where people do such things. In New Orleans, I’ve never seen anyone double parked, but New Orleans isn’t a big city when you compare it to Chicago or New York. Our Central Business District is only 10 blocks by 12 blocks. Most of the streets are 2-lane one way with parking on both sides. Double parking would take up half of the street.
I DO see people parked across two spaces diagonally or parked across two parking meters downtown (illegal and usually ticketed). These people aren’t double parked though, they’re idiots.
I used to have an old beater and once at Christmas time I saw a car diagonally parked across two spaces at the mall. Someone had parked in the next space a foot from his front bumper so I pulled into the space behind him and he was stuck. I went in and did my Shopping and came out several hours later to find the driver irate with a policeman and a tow truck standing there. The shopping center had immobilized (booted) his car and were having it towed.
No, I mean, I wonder whether using “double parked” to refer to people parked halfway in two different spaces is a regional thing. I checked a few different online dictionaries, and none of them included the definition I’d always used before, but given that a few people here have said that they used my old definition, I’m thinking there’s more to it than just me being an idiot.
Daniel