Dooring

Legal issues

Most areas have laws that require car users to check for bicyclists before opening the door of their vehicle, but there have been serious injuries and deaths caused by drivers illegally opening their doors in the path of a passing cyclist where this is prohibited by law.

Many areas have laws may be interpreted as requiring cyclists to ride in the door zone, meaning they may expose themselves to danger in order to keep out of the way of motorized traffic. These laws typically have exceptions; avoiding hazards, such as an open door, is sometimes among them.

The problem lies with avoiding this 5 feet (1.5 m) zone, which should be part of the parking zone, when there is a bike lane or the perception by law enforcement or motorists that one should be riding their bike out of the travel lane to not impede faster motorized traffic. In most jurisdictions, a cyclist is considered a driver/operator of a vehicle afforded the same rights as the driver of a motor vehicle; however, in some jurisdictions cyclists are further restricted by laws such as "ride as far right as practicable." From a cyclist's point of view, "practicable" includes safety, and safety is noted in many of these laws through exceptions; however, many law enforcement, judges, motoring public and even cyclists stop reading at "as far right." Most motor travel lanes adjacent to a bike lane are only 10–11 feet (3.0–3.4 m) wide, so if a cyclist has to use that lane to avoid hazards in the bike lane, it is too narrow to safely share with passing traffic and he/she should ride in a "lane-control" method as is allowed by most of these ordinances.

Avoidance

Because it is rarely possible to see and react safely to a suddenly opening door, traffic cycling educational programs teach cyclists to ride in the travel lane outside of the door zone despite the fact that in at least one place, New York, 96% of deaths have occurred outside of the door zone. This is easier than locating bike lanes outside the door zone and increasing the width of parking lanes.

Motorists can make dooring less likely by practicing the "Dutch reach" - opening the car door by reaching across the body with the more distant hand. In the Netherlands, drivers taking their license exam are required to open the door with their right hand, thereby turning their torso and allowing them to see any oncoming cyclists, hence the term "Dutch reach". This move does not have a Dutch name, but in 2016 an American physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, coined the term to help promote the Dutch method which was little known in the United States.International interest in the term and method followed its coinage, suggesting that the far hand method was or remains little known across the globe.

Prevalence

It is difficult to find statistics on the incidence of door zone fatalities, serious injuries, and collisions as the type of accident is often not recorded consistently from city to city. However, an analysis of Chicago bike crashes found that there were 344 reported dooring crashes reported in 2011, for a rate of 0.94 doorings per day. Doorings made up 19.7% of all reported bike crashes. The number of additional doorings that occurred without being reported is unknown.

Collisions

In Toronto, "motorist opens door in path of cyclist" collisions were 11.9% of all reported car/bike collisions in 2003. Eight percent of serious injuries to cyclists in London in 2007 were caused by cyclists swerving to avoid opening car doors. In the Australian state of Victoria between 2006 and 2010, car door openings caused eight percent of serious injuries to cyclists.

Relative risk

Relative to other collisions such as getting rear ended, getting doored is less risky: "80.04% of those cyclists who were doored were injured, while 94.40% of those in non-dooring crashes were injured." Also, it should be noted that getting doored itself usually is not fatal; rather, most serious door-zone-related injuries are sustained by getting hit by a motor vehicle while swerving to avoid the door. Thus, most deaths and serious injuries occur in the travel lane and not in the door zone.

Fatalities

In New York City, 3% (7 out of 225) of bicyclist fatalities in the ten-year period between 1996 and 2005 were from striking an open door or swerving to avoid one. In London three people were killed in car door opening incidents between 2010 and 2012. In two peer reviewed studies, 124 deaths in London during 1985-1992, and 142 deaths in New Zealand during 1973-1978, none of the fatalities occurred in door opening incidents. While there were 1112 collisions caused by opening doors in the Australian state of Victoria between 2000 and 2010, the first fatality occurred in March 2010.

Bike lanes and door zone incidents

In a comparison of Santa Barbara (without bike lanes) to Davis, California (with bike lanes), 8% of the car-bike collisions in the former involved an opening door, whereas the latter had none.