Let me tell you what I've been through, and maybe you can agree with me on the hotspot suggestion.
I use my superbar (Windows 7 taskbar) on the top and the dock on the bottom, centered. It hides when I maximize a program. So far, that's OK.
For example, I'm using Google Chrome. I enter a website and want to copy a long text from there. Then, I click on the first word of the text and move the mouse pointer down to the bottom edge of the program to select the whole text. As the Chrome window is maximized, the bottom edge of the program is also the edge of my screen. Once the mouse pointer reaches that bottom edge and stay there for a while (because I'm waiting for the page to scroll down until the end of the text), the dock comes up (of course).
Summarizing, that's what I'm talking about. The dock comes up even when I don't want it to. On that example, you can see that the fact that the mouse is positioned on the bottom edge has nothing to do with the dock. The pointer is there because it has to be. There's no other way to select the whole text if I don't do that. Unless I don't use a maximized window, but this is ridiculous. I shouldn't adapt to the dock. The dock should adapt to me. It should offer me options to avoid this kind of issue. Hotspots would do the trick. Or, my first suggestion, call it from the keyboard, not mouse (or both, why not?)
I hope I've made myself clear this time. Thanks a lot, guys. 
brunces