Bicyclists Seek Solution To Deadly 'Dooring' Crashes In Los Angeles

white bicycle, or ghost bike, with a sign saying rest in peace locked to a pole on a New York City street is a memorial at the site where a cyclist was killed by a crash motor vehicle. Image: Deb Cohn-Orbach/UCG/Universal Images Group (Getty Images)

Biking ain’t easy; in fact it can be straight up deadly when faced with giant, speeding cars and infrastructure that focuses solely on those cars. But even parked cars pose a serious risk to bike riders in the form of dooring — or when a car driver opens their door into the bike lane, resulting in a crash. The Los Angeles Times spoke to transit advocates and people affected by dooring, who offered simple solutions to keeping the road safe for everyone.

No One Wants To Bike To Work

The Times spoke to advocate Yasmine Nasser Diaz who lost her husband Robert George to a dooring incident in October of this year. While safety experts told the publication they believe dooring is usually accidental, the collision type is also under investigated and under reported. The Times sought to learn more both from Diaz and safe street activists she is working with to bring simple solutions to the city:

“When you ride a bicycle, your innate sense to protect yourself is different than if you’re walking or in a car,” said Schneider, the founder of Streets For All, a nonprofit organization based in L.A. “You look at things through a lens that is very specific to surviving and staying alive on a bicycle.”

Schneider and Damian Kevitt, the executive director of road safety advocacy group Streets Are For Everyone, also encouraged bicyclists to take up the full driving lane whenever they feel unsafe riding next to parked cars— even if drivers become impatient.

“Your life is more valuable than how long it takes them to get to Starbucks,” Kevitt said.

Drivers can prevent dooring by looking in their rear-view mirror or by adopting the Dutch Reach, which Diaz hopes will become locally known as Robert’s Reach in honor of her husband.

It seems efforts to make roads safe for everyone too often focus on what bicyclists can do to keep themselves safe in the face of a two-ton (or more) tank. Drivers taking extra precautions by doing something as simple as changing how we open the door could save untold numbers of people from injury or even death. You can read more about the struggle between protecting bikers and managing traffic in LA here.

Dooring isn’t just a problem in sunny LA, however. To the north, at least 14 bikers in the Bay area reported the frightening experience, with several ending up in the hospital due to the collisions earlier this year. These bikers were convinced that the doorings were intentional.