Category: Doored

Don’t Door Me!

This is an excellent article not just about dooring accidents, but about bike lane design standards, how bicycle accidents are counted and how the system continues to implement design standards that are sub-standard.

Where Bike Lane Design Collides with Savvy Cycling

National and state databases only include crashes involving motor vehicles in transport. Since a parked car is not in transport, and a bicycle is not a motor vehicle, crashes where a bicyclist hits a parked car door are excluded.


Dooring accounts for 12 to 27 percent of urban car-bike collisions, making it one of the most common crash types.

Drivers, Look For Cyclists And Help Them Not Get Doored

Getting Doored for a cyclist is a very serious, even potentially deadly accident.

Bike Lanes are often placed too near parked cars, or as cyclists say, in the door zone. Cyclists are often boxed in a very narrow line of safety next to a busy lane of traffic while riding on the far outside of a bike lane to stay out of door zones.

Drivers, you can help. Start the “Dutch Reach” and teach your passengers to do the same.

Teach your friends and kids that bicycle to be aware of the danger of door zones too.

The Dutch Reach is a simple change in behavior, but it automatically puts your body in a position to be looking before opening your car door.

Fatal bike crashes are on the rise in the United States; in 2016 the highest number of cyclist deaths since 1991 was recorded. The research doesn’t say how many of those deaths are from doorings specifically, or how effective the Dutch Reach method is in preventing crashes, but a study done in 2015 in Vancouver, British Columbia, found that the car-to-cyclist crash type with the most injuries was doorings, said Kay Teschke, professor emeritus at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Cyclist sues after Uber, private insurance fail to cover crash

Cyclist sues after Uber, private insurance fail to cover crash
Oregonian
10//15/15

[…] Pavenko was cited for improper opening of a door. […]

Police recorded Pavenko’s personal auto insurance information, but Root’s attorney, Michael Colbach, said Pavenko’s insurer wouldn’t cover the liability because Pavenko was driving for hire at the time. […]