16/06/2026
🚨 More than 1,100 cyclists were killed on US roads in a single recent year - and some of those deaths started with a car door.
It's called "dooring," and there's a simple move that could prevent it. It costs nothing. It takes half a second. And once you know it, you'll wonder why it isn't taught everywhere.
It's called the Dutch Reach.
Here's the problem it solves. Cyclists get "doored" when a driver or passenger swings a car door open without looking, straight into the path of an oncoming rider. The cyclist slams into the door or swerves into traffic to avoid it. The second impact, with a moving car, is often the one that kills.
And it's not rare. In some American cities, dooring accounts for 15 to 20 percent of all reported bike crashes.
So what's the fix? A tiny change in how you open your door.
Instead of reaching for the handle with the hand closest to it, you reach across your body with your far hand. For a driver, that's your right hand. For a passenger on the curb side, your left.
That one awkward motion changes everything. Reaching across forces your shoulder and head to swivel back toward the road. Suddenly you're looking right where a cyclist would be coming from - over your shoulder, into your blind spot - instead of staring straight ahead.
Reach. Swivel. Look. Open slowly.
The technique gets its name from the Netherlands, where cycling is woven into daily life and drivers learn to look out for riders almost by instinct. But the modern push came from much closer to home.
In 2016, a retired doctor named Michael Charney was shaken by a fatal dooring in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He coined the term "Dutch Reach," launched a project to spread it, and admitted the hardest part himself: "I had a hard time retooling myself. But it's a simple behavioral fix - if you do it, it works."
It caught on. Massachusetts added it to its driver's manual in 2017. Illinois followed in 2018, Pennsylvania in 2019. Today it's backed by AAA, the National Safety Council, and the League of American Bicyclists.
And the best part? You don't need a law or a campaign to start. You can do it on your very next car trip.
Here's how it goes, every single time you step out:
- Reach across with your far hand
- Let your body turn toward the road
- Check your mirror and look over your shoulder
- Crack the door slowly, then step out
It feels strange for about a week. Then it becomes second nature - the same way checking your mirror did when you first learned to drive.
A door opened without looking has ended lives. A door opened with the Dutch Reach gives everyone a fighting chance.
So here's the real question: now that you know about the Dutch Reach, will you use it - and who in your life needs to hear about it too?
Image courtesy: By Mcha6677 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, By Mcha6677 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
