MILWAUKEE — Parking your car should be a no-brainer, after all, it’s one of the first things you learn to do when learning to drive. I bet you never thought opening your car door could be dangerous. Well, Debbie Lazaga takes a closer look at a technique being introduced to keep everyone safe.
You wouldn’t think that riding a bike could be life-threatening, but for many bikers, riding past a parked car is a dangerous proposition.
“It’s a crash typically that happens when someone is actually parked, when they fling open or whip open their car door without taking adequate care, and the cyclist strikes the door. We call this dooring.” says Michael Charney, the founder of the Dutch Reach Project.
He says that this was a big enough deal that an entire country had to act to get control of it.
Charney says, “The Dutch had this problem back in the 60s and 70s. It’s Holland, which is now considered one of the safest places for bike, walk, bed, public transit. In those days, Holland was having 3,300 or more deaths a year.”
And that led to a whole host of reforms so that everyone could enjoy the road safely.
“And one of the things that evolved was the introduction of this method of using your far hand rather than your near hand to open your car door. As you reach across, your top of your body turns, your head turns with it, you actually get a view of the side view mirror. And then you can look out the window, do what we call a shoulder check. You can see whether someone’s coming,” explains Charney
Now this has repercussions not only for the biking world, but also for the street car. The hop vehicles will be going right past lines of parked cars. So you’ll definitely want to make sure nothing is coming along if you’re parked along one of the routes.
Charney says, “This is a low cost, no cost, no brainer. And hey, if it helps, why not? The goal of the project is to introduce it into state driver’s ed manuals, as well as raise awareness of the technique. But it’s a hard sell for people entrenched in habit. You just need to be mindful of what you’re doing. Something that you should be any time you get behind the wheel.
Learn more about the Dutch Reach Technique here.
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