I’m not sure the questions are phrased in a complete way. We need more info I think.
E.g. 1)
D player stops from making a bid on the disk and a calls a violation stating that they stopped to avoid contact, pass is complete
‘Stopping to avoid contact’ is correct behaviour, and if the opponent has legitimately got there in front of you such that you can’t layout safely, then there is no dangerous play call. The definition of a foul is that you initiate contact, meaning that your opponent could not avoid you. So if you CAN avoid them you should stop. It would be YOUR dangerous play if you could avoid contact and choose not to.
The point of a dangerous play call is that YOU could get there first, but you have reason to believe that your opponent will not respect his own duty to pull out of the situation. To call DP in advance of the play occurring, you need to be confident that
– you would ‘reserve the space’ first
– that your opponent could only become involved by initiating significant contact
and also you must have reason to believe that they will do so.
So the question we need to answer for each of your first three scenarios is something like ‘If both players committed fully, who would have reserved the space first?’
You can’t call DP just because you stop to avoid contact, but because you stop to avoid /dangerous/ contact. And by definition, the person who first reserves the space is not dangerous, since the other player is at that point able to pull out. So only the person coming in second can be accused of dangerous play.
From the interpretations:
If two players have the same space reserved at the same time and contact occurs,
whoever caused the conflict of reservations (i.e. whoever last moved so that their
reserved space clashed with the other players reserved space – usually the player
who got the reservation last) is guilty of the foul.
I don’t see any reason that wouldn’t apply to dangerous play fouls also. If you’re sure that you could reserve the space, and also confident that the opponent will not respect that reservation but rather initiate contact, then you may call dangerous play.
So:
1) It depends on who reserved the space first. If D had the chance to reserve the space first but pulled out because they believed the O were about to do something dangerous, then fair call; if they pulled out because they couldn’t get to the disc without contacting a legitimately positioned O player then no call.
2) Same as 1), but in reverse.
3) This is potentially a dangerous play call, in either direction. If D could have got there first but had reason to believe O would bid, they may stop and call it (even though in the end O didn’t bid). Similarly, if O could have got there but expected a dangerous bid from the D, they may call it. If both players pull out and call dangerous play (presumably because it’s close enough that both think they could reserve the space first), then it would be an offsetting foul.
Your scenario 4) is not dangerous play, in my opinion. No contact occurred, and the lack of contact was not caused by any adjustment the offence made, so the D has made a clean attempt. You could say something like ‘It could have been dangerous if I had…’ but the defender could equally argue ‘I took that into account and could see you weren’t going to.’ I suppose, perhaps, that a play that appeared slightly reckless could be taken into account in future dangerous play calls, but there’s nothing in that particular bid which warrants any action.