Door to Safety

October 7, 2018 7:56 AM

The Dutch Reach: A No-Tech Way to Save Bicyclists’ Lives. "He calls the maneuver the “Dutch Reach,” and it works like this: When you are about to exit the car, you reach across your body for the door handle with your far or opposite hand. This action forces you to turn toward the side view mirror, out and then back over your shoulder to be sure a bicyclist is not coming from behind. Only then do you slowly open the door."
posted by storybored (3 comments total)

Previously
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:00 AM on October 7, 2018

Unfortunately, it's not always effective for passengers getting out of the back seat. I do the Dutch Reach when I'm driving, and in the front passenger seat. But when I take Lyft's, a lot of cars have no visibility from the back seat. Car services like Lyft and Uber need to come up with a solution for this, because even though I'm extreme cautious, I'm worried I'm going to take a cyclist out*.

* Driver's need to take responsibility and act as a second set of eyes for departing passengers. I got taken out by an car share passenger 3 months ago. In this case, there was no caution taken at all; they just flung the door open without looking. If the driver had though to say, "hang on, let me check of anyone is coming up on us before you open the door.", it wouldn't have happened.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:13 AM on October 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

My door prize was thankfully not nearly so serious as Peter Hahn's, but - I was biking to law school, and there was a stretch with an elementary school where parents would sometimes stop in the street to let kids out. It was two lanes, so I couldn't really go around, and the door opened too fast for me to stop or swerve. I hit the door, I fell over sideways, it messed my hip up for a while. I told the driver she needed to be more careful because if her kid had been faster getting out of the car, I would have hit them and not been able to prevent it.

I'm sure she later told the story as "a cyclist came out of nowhere" but she had passed me getting to the spot where she stopped. She just wasn't paying attention.

As a marker of where the US is in terms of bicycle awareness, I've had drivers threaten to kill me for biking in the street. I'd cite less severe things, but that's really the size and shape of it: a lot of car drivers don't want to share the road with us and don't feel that they should have to.

I can't ride now because of a disability issue, but I would really like to see stuff like the "Dutch Reach" become more standardized. I've been happy to see protected bike lanes start to be a thing. For most residential areas, though, there aren't going to be protected lanes and people aren't paying attention, so training people to pay more attention as the default would be great.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:21 AM on October 7, 2018 [2 favorites]