The Dutch Reach: Clever Workaround to Keep Cyclists from Getting “Doored”

It is true that getting doored is not part of the Dutch vocabulary as it is not something that happens often. But there are more reasons than grabbing the handle with the opposite hand.<p>A non extensive list: 1) Dutch car drivers <i>all</i> have been bicyclist before they get their driver license, everyday to school more than an hour being nothing being frowned on. 2) Major transit bike routes have separate bike lanes, the tiny narrow ones of the gif in the article barely exist. 3) Bike lanes in cities usually are placed between the footpath and the parked cars, with <i>most of the times</i> a 50cm wide band left of the bike path allowing for car doors being opened without going over the bike paths, usually this is used for planting trees too 4) All politicians drive bike, the Dutch Prime Minister comes to work on his bike 5) There are local associations part of the national <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fietersbond.nl" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fietersbond.nl</a> in every town and they passionately lobby every time they see an opportunity. 6) these volunteers are highly respected and their input is valued by the municipalities 7) one of the <i>prime goals</i> of Dutch national ministerie of Traffic is lowering the number of injured and death in traffic, good recording of cause by police is step one, good statistics then determine the ways roads are laid out. 8) On smaller roads without a separate bicycle path, as a bicyclist you&#x27;re always on the watch if someone might step out of a car and try to keep a distance by bicycling towards the middle of the road which isn&#x27;t an issue as this is low traffic street, major bike transit always has separated bike paths with distance to the parked cars. 9) during driving lessons, watching bicyclist is a prime part of the lessons and a good driver keeps an eye on the mirrors for back-coming bicyclist and will warn passengers on the back seats before they get out.<p>And there are probably more reasons that Dutch have few accidents being doored.

Bullshit. I&#x27;m Dutch, never heard of or exercised this &quot;Dutch Reach&quot; behaviour and I was not tested for it when getting my driver&#x27;s license. Instead, you just look around and in your mirrors to see if other traffic is coming before blindly and like an asshole opening your door, it doesn&#x27;t matter how you open the door after you became aware of what is going on around you. I call this behaviour the &quot;Dutch Common Sense&quot;.

As a Dutch person, this is probably the cause of our parents always telling us to carefully open the door by looking first. And if you are not sure, open it a bit to see more. Also, in our license test, you&#x27;ll have to learn the following rule: Getting out of the car, is just like turning the car, a special operation and you need to give everyone else priority so that your action will not cause problems. So take your time, be patient and be cautious.

I&#x27;m not quite sure I understand. Do Americans <i>not</i> look at what&#x27;s coming from behind them before opening a slab of metal and glass a meter out the side of their cars?<p>Kind of reminds me of when I first moved to Thailand. My (now) mother-in-law asked her daughter why I kept looking over my shoulder when driving her car, and why&#x2F;if I couldn&#x27;t use the side mirrors. She had literally never heard of nor understood the concept of a blind spot.

Getting doored is honestly terrifying (I don&#x27;t say that lightly). I bike and longboard frequently, and I&#x27;ll avoid bike lanes if they are alongside parked cars. And this is in Boulder, one of the most bike friendly cities in the US:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bicycling.com&#x2F;culture&#x2F;advocacy&#x2F;2014-top-50-bike-friendly-cities&#x2F;slide&#x2F;6" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bicycling.com&#x2F;culture&#x2F;advocacy&#x2F;2014-top-50-bike-f...</a>

The real answer is to get rid of street parking when you have a bike lane. They&#x27;re incompatible. In fact, just get rid of street parking altogether. As a bicyclist, I&#x27;ve been doored. As a pedestrian, I find it difficult to see around parked cars to know if it&#x27;s safe to cross the street in some locations. As a driver, I find it difficult to to see around parked cars to know if it&#x27;s safe to enter the street AND I have a massively increased cognitive load of paying attention, not just to the traffic on the street, but to everything that may be emerging from a car or from between cars.

Amsterdam resident here. Such a good infrastructure and laws for the bycyclists make them not giving a single shit about the way they are actually driving their bycicles. And their behaviour and driving style is often very offensive to both pedestrians and car users. So it&#x27;s not that straight and black and white.

Getting it added to the driver&#x27;s license test is probably the key here.

Perhaps we could add radars that block the door if there is a risk of dooring, either by a bike, or another car.<p>The car manufacturers have just agreed to put collision mitigation systems in all cars (by 2020 or something), and that requires radars and cameras. Even better, some cars have radars in the back, too, to identify cross traffic &amp; c. So, identifying potential dooring event as well, might be quite doable using those same radars.<p>Edit: I forgot that my car also has this &#x27;Blind Spot Indicator&#x27;, that is, some radars that look to the side and back, to figure out if the other car is in your blind spot. I guess that could be used to prevent dooring, too.

Right, Large scale change of driver habits is a simple solution... a more enforcable suggestion is that the car owner is by default liable for any damages that happen from dooring, and that dooring is a fineable offence. Give car owners a real motivacion to check for bikes

I am curious about how may incidents are caused from people that consistently are a bit lazy, and how many are caused by people that make a one off mistake. It is a genuine question. The reason it comes to my mind is recently I was doing a three point turn (actually a 20 point turn) to get out of my drive way, as other cars had left me with almost no space to get out, part of this manouver involved me having to pump up onto the kerb when reversing, and just after doing it, I saw a little girl appear from behind my car on her scooter, she then stopped and looked at me. I didn&#x27;t find out from her (she disappear shortly after) whether I had almost hit her, or not, but either way it shook me up a little, as I appreciate I could have so easily caused an accident, and I would say I am a very careful, cautious driver. In this particular scenario other road users had left the cars parked in a way that bumping up the kerb was my only option, but I simply didn&#x27;t see this small girl, I think she came from behind a parked car, so I couldn&#x27;t see her. Luckily no harm was done, but it shook me up a little. Hopefully it&#x27;ll reduce my chances of having a similar incident in future as it&#x27;ll make more more vigilent to my surroundings.

The problem is, dooring only affects the doorer after it happens. Most other traffic violations, like speeding, blowing stop signs, failure to yield, etc, can get you a ticket regardless of their outcome. Opening a car door into traffic, in Chicago at least, puts you at fault but there&#x27;s no getting a ticket for not looking. There&#x27;s only a ticket after your action causes an injury.<p>Obviously, we can&#x27;t have police ticketing everyone parallel parking for not looking in their mirror, so we think we need to attack this from an education perspective alone.<p>I propose instead, we stop trying to segregate bikes into lanes that they don&#x27;t fit into! Good bike lanes have a buffer between cars that makes dooring almost impossible.<p>Bad:<p>|B|C<p>Good:<p>|B|\|C<p>Where B = Bike and C = car and slashes and pipes = paint on the roads.<p>Or, if you prefer an image: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nacto.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;bufferedlane_3d&#x2F;buffered-bike-lane_parking3d_0.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nacto.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;bufferedlane_3d&#x2F;...</a><p>Or even better: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;farm4.staticflickr.com&#x2F;3746&#x2F;9711441935_3df2f28926.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;farm4.staticflickr.com&#x2F;3746&#x2F;9711441935_3df2f28926.jpg</a>

One thing to consider is that the Netherlands is also considered the best place to drive in the world. Being pro-bicycle removes a significant number of short car journeys from the road. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailyhive.com&#x2F;vancouver&#x2F;best-place-in-the-world-to-be-a-driver-netherlands" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailyhive.com&#x2F;vancouver&#x2F;best-place-in-the-world-to-be...</a>

Great, a solution that boils down to &quot;bikers can be safe from just one of many mortal dangers, if and only if every single driver learns this new habit and does it right every time&quot;.<p>I want solutions in which safety doesn&#x27;t depend on perfect behaviour from people at minimal risk (drivers), like physical separation of lanes.

Just reach over the handle bars and close the door first.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instagram.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;BAayzrJmiJu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instagram.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;BAayzrJmiJu&#x2F;</a>

Here in Austin, some streets have done away with parallel parking in favor of back-in angle parking. This approach has some benefits, one of which is eliminating the possibility of dooring bicyclists.<p>Music in the video is lame, but this video illustrates the concept: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HddkCbsWHlk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HddkCbsWHlk</a>

Clearly the solution is to have doors that open like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.ytimg.com&#x2F;vi&#x2F;0oV4IVy8tvE&#x2F;maxresdefault.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.ytimg.com&#x2F;vi&#x2F;0oV4IVy8tvE&#x2F;maxresdefault.jpg</a>

Honestly, given how many broken driver&#x27;s side mirrors you see around, likely received the same way, it seems like a smart move in general. Good for peds, good for bikes, good for cars, and good for the people getting out of their cars.

In Belgium we don&#x27;t have a word for doored either. But we don&#x27;t use our right hand, we are just learned to look and make sure we are not going to smack someone of their bike. Also often the lane next to you is a car-lane. As such you also learn not to swing open your door wildly, as you might loose your door ;)

1) this is not a clever workaround, this is common sense. if you don&#x27;t do this already, you&#x27;re a terrible motorist and shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to drive.<p>2) do high end cars have proximity sensors for this sort of thing yet? comparable to the way that large vehicles alert you if you&#x27;re about to back into something.

Cycling here in Boulder is definitely much more dangerous compared to The Netherlands. A lot of cars turn right without checking for bikes. What&#x27;s up with that?<p>On the other hand the bike sharing program here in Boulder is the best I&#x27;ve ever seen.<p>(I&#x27;m Dutch and live in Boulder, Colorado)

So am i the only one who uses a different technique? I always look in the side mirror (the one on the driver side=left side) before i open the door, where i can perfectly see incoming bikes&#x2F;etc passing my car. When i got my drivers license i was taught to do this and it became a habit, so i&#x27;ve been doing it ever since. Works very well.<p>fyi i&#x27;m Dutch and i&#x27;ve never heard of the &quot;Dutch reach&quot; before.

I was doing something similar to this over the summer when I sprained some ligaments in my left hand so it was painful to open the door using the &quot;usual&quot; left hand motion. The video seems to imply that reaching over your body to open the door with your right hand will naturally force your body to turn to see behind you (or to the side). This never happened in my experience, I can reach over and open the door with my right hand while still looking forward. Actually having to turn your torso has to be an additional learned behavior. I suspect that folks might make the turn at first if taught to do so, then eventually do the lazier thing and stop turning.<p>As a cyclist who has been nearly doored on multiple occasions, I emphasize but the cultural change might be a bit too much to expect. TBH, I prefer jawbone3&#x27;s suggestion of making the driver&#x2F;car owner liable by default for &quot;dooming&quot; and applying a fine and&#x2F;or surcharge.

Good luck changing drivers behaviour. It is hard enough getting everyone to use an indicator.

Is it just me, or is the cyclist in this gif(from the article):<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;app&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;doorzone.gif" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;app&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;doorzone.g...</a><p>Cycling way too fast on a narrow lane like this?<p>I&#x27;m not saying that he&#x27;s at fault, obviously the fault is 100% on the side of whoever opened the door, but if I was driving 60mph next to a lane of standing traffic, that would be completely irresponsible, because if someone pulled out into my lane the accident would be severe. Driving in cities requires caution, but I notice that cyclists cycle as if they are alone on the road, zooming at 30mph past standing traffic.<p>I&#x27;m not guilt-free, I used to cycle ~2000 miles a year in a large city and a I did my share of stupid irresponsible stuff on a bike, but I think both sides need a bit of education on how to be safe on the road.

As a Dutchman, this &#x27;dutch reach&#x27; technique doesn&#x27;t exist here. People just look, they don&#x27;t use some trick to remind them not to be assholes.

Dutchy from Amsterdam here. Never heard about the term nor the technique. We&#x27;re to look in all mirrors and behind the shoulder before acting.

I Germany this is taught as &#x27;Schulterblick&#x27; (&#x27;over the shoulder look&#x27;) in driving school (which is mandatory in this country).<p>In general, you are taught to always use Schulterblick when:<p>1. Changing lanes.<p>2. Entering&#x2F;exiting from&#x2F;to a ramp.<p>3. Turning.<p>4. Getting out of a parking spot.<p>5. Opening a door to exit the car.<p>Modern rear mirrors are curved at the outer vertical edge to avoid any dead spot. This means just checking the mirror before you do any of the above should -- in theory --, be enough (except for some cases of 3).<p>But better safe than sorry.<p>An exception are trucks. They have a dead spot at the right which the driver can&#x27;t check. Mercedes introduced a an electronic solution for this in 2014.

I&#x27;m going to try this and see how it goes.

Wow, that&#x27;s the first time I&#x27;ve seen 500+ comments on an HN thread about cycling!<p>As to the &quot;Dutch&quot; grip: when I did driving school in Germany some years back, my teacher took great pains to impress on me to always look back before opening a door. In fact, not doing so can cause you to fail your driving test. As having to retake your driving test here can easily set you back several hundred euros, I learnt quickly...

How do existing self-driving cars handle this case? Perhaps regulation could cover this if the manufacturers aren&#x27;t. The cars should have sensors to know it&#x27;s not safe to open the door.<p>Getting rid of parked cars will be a good start.<p>EDIT: obviously the car can sound a warning or even briefly prevent the door from opening. Similar case, what if a car or truck is passing by very closely at that moment.

I wonder if the car couldn&#x27;t be more helpful.<p>For example, a lit rear indicator light (not blinking) would be a signal that I could check for without much cognitive effort, and it wouldn&#x27;t be too confusing for the rest of the traffic. Just having it turn on when car was turned off but the doors haven&#x27;t been opened should cover most situation.

To be honest, I never use my right arm to open the left door, and I never heard of this practise. But I will always look in the mirror or behind me to check if a bike or scooter comes up from behind.<p>In big cities like Utrecht and Amsterdam, in certain neighbourhoods with lots of migrants, it is - as a cyclist - not safe to assume that someone will check for cyclists from behind. You - as cyclist - have to take care of yourself, which means driving more on the road instead of the cycle path. As an experience big-city-cyclist this is no problem for me. I merge with car traffic without thinking.<p>But I see it happen all too often that cars take a left or right turn without looking back. Same with people crossing roads without looking left or right. They just assume that the other people will stop. These are mostly migrants not used to our way of doing this, but more and more people using their smartphone in traffic do exactly the same.

I guess this is not a bad idea, but just looking in the side mirror before opening the door is easier to do, and probably easier to teach people to do.<p>As a cyclist, I give parked cars as much room as possible. I&#x27;ve never been doored... though I&#x27;ve never ridden in NYC either.

I&#x27;m honestly surprised this is such a common problem in the US. Most of the parallel parking spaces here are next to the road, so if you open your door without looking, some other car will crash into you. We have been trained since we were children to always look when exiting a car parked on a street. We were not even allowed to exit from the road side of the car most of the time. As a driver, you have to be super careful, because when you are parked, there is usually a steady traffic less then 50cm next to your left. You basically always have too look and double-check before opening your door on a street. I live in Slovakia, but I think my experience matches most of the countries in this part of Europe.

Bullshit article: the rule that everyone learns is to check your mirror and double check by looking over your shoulder. I have never heard of the right hand rule.<p>It gets a habit because the chances are pretty high because of narrow roads and a lot of other traffic behind you.

This is great, because it&#x27;s simple, easy to explain and highly actionable. It&#x27;s incentive-compatible because implementing this yourself greatly reduces the chance you&#x27;ll door someone, and few people actually want to cause an accident.

It&#x27;s been standard practice in Italy since forever: I witnessed someone failing their exam while I was waiting for my turn to get my driving license.<p>The idea is that looking behind also protects you from being smashed to a pulp by an incoming car.

It&#x27;s weird to see this described as a workaround, or a deliberate method, when to me as a swede living in Malmö it&#x27;s the most natural thing ever.<p>It&#x27;s up to drivers, and cab drivers, to warn their passengers to be careful when opening the door. Of course this is an imperfect system but from my perspective it has worked for as long as I&#x27;ve lived.<p>Swedish traffic law dictates that the one opening the door is responsible for any damages caused, so to protect themselves, their insurance premium and their cars drivers obviously become careful when opening doors.<p>It messes up your whole daily routine if your door is broken because of a bicycle.

The other day I was at a four-way intersection, waiting at traffic lights with my bike, next to a car on my right. Red light was showing. There was no oncoming traffic. Then, on a whim, instead of waiting before I could move forward, I turned right 45 degrees and in an attempt to cross the road, walked my bike in front of the car and as I was passing the car, an aggressive motorcyclist who was behind the car moved out of the line very quickly with an intention to jump the red light and in doing so ended up T-boning my bike. I could get away safely but not without minor damage to my bike.

This is very old, for as long as I can remember (decades) you will fail to pass your driving test in Greece if you try to open the car&#x27;s door with your hand closest to it and without checking the side mirror first.

And this is what most Dutch people will take away from this article:<p><i>looks at the taxi-GIF and images</i> -- wait, who <i>does</i> that? did they do that on purpose?? the bike was like <i>this</i> close before they opened the door, how could they not see it?<p><i>reads on</i> -- so hold up, in the US people open their car doors without looking. Yes, no wonder bikes are getting &quot;doored&quot; left and right .. mostly right, I guess.<p>I&#x27;m a bit at a loss for words, actually. It&#x27;s like backing into a parking spot without looking.<p>This isn&#x27;t rocket surgery, I don&#x27;t think you need a &quot;clever workaround&quot; :)

When riding my bicycle I treat it as if I were on my motorcycle, all cars are threats and if I can see someone in a car I am passing they will open the door so I plan for it

For a pretty thorough description of how The Netherlands achieves safe biking, see this video:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=l0GA901oGe4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=l0GA901oGe4</a><p>&quot;Fred Young, a Landscape Architect based in Seattle, led us through a visual tour of Dutch cycling infrastructure, share insights of the transportation experts he met and show how cycling is a part of daily life in the Netherlands.&quot;

Slightly off-topic, but I found it difficult to read an article with a looping clip of a traffic accident embedded. I skipped the second paragraph.

I know this would be a lot harder, but I think the best solution would be some city redesign where we separated bike and automobile routes, or at least minimized the places where they are together.<p>The Dutch reach _is_ clever, but it takes a lot of retraining of existing motorists, so it will take concerted awareness raising and probably a fairly long time-frame to take effect here.

I simply don&#x27;t understand people that swing doors wide open without even a thought of looking. It&#x27;s just plain stupidity

Interestingly, the bike lane shown in the first picture of the article rather marks the region that by German law cyclists are required to avoid. Cyclists are required to keep about a meter distance from parked cars to prevent dooming. That of course does not stop local authorities from creating bike lines exactly as shown in the article :(.

A couple of months ago I watched a short video about how we got our cycling lanes. I think it provides some interesting context on why we built our cycling infrastructure. If you like this topic, you&#x27;ll like the video...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;XuBdf9jYj7o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;XuBdf9jYj7o</a>

A honest question for people who say getting rid of street parking is an economically viable idea - would it be economically viable if there was an underground road system purely for bikes, where there would be no way for cars and larger vehicles to share the ride? You also don&#x27;t need to worry about the weather.

I&#x27;ve always opened the door this way. I want to know what&#x27;s happening and it makes sense to open it that way. Kind of looking both ways before crossing, it&#x27;d be strange to give it a name like &quot;The British Method&quot; since you don&#x27;t imagine anyone mentally undiminished <i>not</i> doing it.

I don&#x27;t wear a helmet in my home town Amsterdam. I do wear a helmet here in San Francisco. Why? Car drivers are just not used to bicyclists in SF. Yes open their door without looking, turn without using their signals. And in general, don&#x27;t pay attention and are on their phones all the time

Great idea but I think more of us cyclists could be riding and anticipating &#x27;if that car door opens can I stop in time?&#x27;. We can&#x27;t rely on people in cars doing the right thing. Many of us cycle too fast to be able to react in time.

This guy has the right idea. The problem, is that your doors are not the doors of a billionaire.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=IJIAOosI6js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=IJIAOosI6js</a>

Resident of San Francisco here, a global leader in amazing bike theft stories.<p>I look my steel cable through my bike helmet straps or I insert my u lock through the helmet. The only way to steal the helmet would be to saw it in half.

Interesting. I&#x27;d just mandate drivers had to spend 10,000m on a motorbike, or time on bicycle and motorbike, before being let near a car. Car driving standards would improve dramatically.

How about side view mirrors for rear seat passengers? As a driver with that technology I&#x27;ve managed to never open my driver door into an oncoming car.

i am suprised how watching out for cyclist, or anything really, is not common sense. I do that and i do not even have a drivers license... Oo

I don&#x27;t know why anyone would fling open the car door on a busy road without checking their mirrors anyway.

I Germany, many bike lanes are on the sidewalk, which is a good solution too, if you have the space for it.

Its called &quot;common sense&quot; or &quot;being polite&quot;

Or, as a bike rider one can simply look into a cars cabin and see if a person is inside. I assume everyone is a terrible driver, have no idea I&#x27;m on the road.<p>I am a regular bike commuter on traffic heavy Los Angeles. I&#x27;ll never understand the mentality of bicyclists who are more concerned with asserting their rights as opposed to exercising caution and restraint. Graveyards are full of people who had the right of way.

We don&#x27;t let people do drugs, so why do we let them ride bikes on roads? It&#x27;s the exact same kind of self-harm, brought on by poor life choices. All the problems in the article can be solved simply by having everyone be in a large sturdy steel frame, i.e. a car. Cars are cheap safe convenient and easy to use, so why is everyone getting on these two wheeled death traps?