When you turn off a road, you need to look for pedestrians and motorbikes. Why is a bicycle so different?
For busy cycle routes, specific infrastructure to deal with this is installed like separate lights and banned turns to de-conflict the road.
For busy cycle routes, specific infrastructure to deal with this is installed like separate lights and banned turns to de-conflict the road.
Something similar to this dynamic happens anywhere you would "look both ways" as a driver but don't have far enough visibility to extrapolate a safe window of passage relative to the speed of oncoming traffic. It can happen when parked cars block your view of oncoming traffic, or when parked cars block view of the bike lane, or when parked cars, trees, hedges, fences etc block view of the sidewalk that a non-pedestrian is using.
Apparently the possibility of vision / line of sight is not the issue. Maybe the willingness, maybe the understanding that yes indeed, there is another lane next to the road, and maybe you should monitor it for traffic, especially before taking a right or left turn.