General Information
What is Dooring?
Dooring is when the driver or passenger of a car opens a car door into or in front of a cyclist. Cyclists can be seriously injured or killed, either by slamming into the door, by being thrown into passing traffic, or when they must swerve suddenly into passing traffic to avoid the door. Most commonly, this occurs when the driver of a car that is parallel parked suddenly opens a door, but can also occur when passengers in cars stopped in traffic open doors.
Dooring appears to be one of the more common types of car/bike collisions, ranging from the third most frequent to most frequent, (see this article for details), depending on the city studied. Statistics aside, nearly every cyclist has a "dooring" story, some more serious than others. Many cyclists are more afraid of dooring than any other type of collision, precisely because it is so unpredictable, and often unpreventable by the cyclist.
Dooring can also be deadly. In June 2008 in Chicago (where anti-dooring.org is located) Clint Miceli was killed in a dooring incident, when he was thrown under the wheels of a passing vehicle when a car door suddenly opened in front of him. You can read more about this tragic event here, and visit Clint’s ghost bike. Clint was known by many in the Chicago bike community, and his death, along with many other injuries over the years, is the impetus that started anti-dooring.org. Unfortunately, Clint is not the only person to have been killed by a door. Riin's Rants and BicycleSafe both have partial lists of other dooring deaths.
Injuries and deaths from dooring are totally preventable, with education of both cyclists and motorists needed. Here at anti-dooring.org, we chose to focus on one small part of the bigger mission. We want to raise the awareness of good motorists about dooring, in the hopes that this can prevent some of these needless injuries.
What Can I Do?
The most important action you can take is to prevent dooring is to check your mirrors for approaching cyclists every time before opening your car door.
In an ideal world, cyclists would be riding out of the "door zone" at all times, and we want any cyclists reading this to ride out of the door zone. However, in the real world, cyclists frequently are in the door zone, either from necessity (such as avoiding potholes) or from inexperience. Nearly the entire width of the bike lane in many cities (including Chicago) is inside the door zone. Also, many cyclists interpret laws saying to "ride as far to the right as practicable" as requiring them to ride inside the door zone.
Once a cyclist is close to the bumper of your parked car, the only person with a chance to prevent a collision is the motorist. We ask that you please check your mirrors for cyclists every time before opening your door. Check them on small streets, busy streets, whether car traffic is stopped or not, CHECK THEM EVERY TIME. Not even the most experienced, alert, safe, well-equipped and law abiding cyclist has any chance to avoid a door that suddenly appears only a few feet ahead. So it’s up to you.
We realize that the people reading this page may have many different opinions about the place of bicycles on the road. However, we hope that good people everywhere do not want to be involved in the serious injury or death of another human being, regardless of the law, the circumstances or who is at fault. We ask that whatever your opinions on bicycling, that you agree as a good motorist to check your mirrors every time. It costs you nothing, but forgetting can have serious costs for someone else, their family, and their friends.
To help reduce dooring, check out our pages for motorists and cyclists, take the "No More Doors" pledge, or help distribute stickers.