It is one of the nightmares of cyclists in the city.
A narrow street, cars parked one behind the other and, when they least expect it, a door that suddenly opens.
The shock is often violent, and the injuries serious.
Lucie, 50, fears above all what specialists call “dooring”.
“I am always on the alert and I am wary of cars that have just parked, taxis or delivery vans that stop in double line, says this seasoned Parisian cyclist, who for ten years has been going to work with her Dutch bike, from Clichy (Hauts-de-Seine), in the inner suburbs, to the center of Paris.
I got into the habit of driving more to the left on the traffic lane to be able to anticipate just in case.
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To avoid the door accident, a simple technique can be adopted by motorists and their passengers.
For the first time, Road Safety is promoting it through two short videos broadcast on the Web, via social networks and platforms such as YouTube, "to first reach the youngest", we explain. within the authority which does not refrain from communicating later in spots on television.
This new reflex can be summed up in an easy-to-remember formula: left door, right hand;
right door, left hand.
“To get out of the car, you have to operate the door handle with the hand opposite to it, explains Road Safety.
In the case of a left door, with the right hand and in the case of the right door, with the left hand.
This change of hand mechanically causes the rotation of the shoulders.
The motorist preparing to open his door to get out of his vehicle is then naturally much better placed to check in his rear-view mirror and towards the rear of his car that no user emerges from the blind spot.
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Frequent and dreadful accidents
“This campaign is both simple because the gesture it wants to popularize really is, and effective.
However, this type of accident is very frequent and particularly dangerous for all types of two-wheelers,” says Florence Guillaume, Interministerial Delegate for Road Safety.
The figures are worrying for cyclists, more and more of whom are getting into the saddle to get around.
In 2021, 227 died in traffic accidents (+21%) and 44,000 were injured, including 3,000 seriously, i.e. 17% more than in 2019, the reference year before Covid.
24 users of motorized personal transport devices (EDPM), scooters or single-wheelers, died last year, up 14% compared to 2019.
If it makes its debut in France, while the Highway Code prohibits "any occupant of a stationary or parked vehicle from opening a door when this maneuver constitutes a danger for himself or other users the idea is far from new in other countries.
It appeared in the 1960s in the Netherlands, where cycling is widespread, and which earned it the name of “Dutch reach”.
It is taught there in driving schools as the surest way to avoid door accidents.
Several American states, such as Illinois, Washington and Pennsylvania, have also adopted it, and the city of Montreal, Canada, promoted it in 2014 through a campaign called “One door, one life”.
The United Kingdom has included it in its Highway Code since 2021 to reduce the number of victims, while eight deaths and more than 3,000 injuries were recorded there from 2011 to 2015. Another study, Belgian this time, has demonstrated that the most frequent accidents affecting cyclists in the Brussels agglomeration were those caused by the untimely opening of vehicle doors on roads without cycle paths.
In France, no analysis of recent accidentology data can go into such fine detail.
However, opening the door the Dutch way was recognized in a study conducted by David Large, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, as the gesture offering maximum visibility to motorists and the most effective method of avoiding accidents.
