page_title: Dooring
section_title: Dutch Reach
hierarchical_section_title: Dooring / Avoidance and prevention / Dutch Reach
caption_attribution_description: English: The Dutch Reach as illustrated by a black &amp; white line drawing of a woman using the established, habitual Dutch method to avoid dooring cyclists and protect drivers and passengers from being struck by on-coming traffic when opening door to exit vehicle into the door zone.
context_page_description: Dooring is a traffic collision or crash in which a bicyclist rides into a motor vehicle's door, swerves to avoid or is struck by a door that was opened quickly by an occupant who failed to check carefully for approaching traffic. Proper procedure requires a driver to check the side mirror before opening the door, and/or perform a shoulder check. Use of the Dutch Reach for vehicle egress has been advised to prevent doorings as it combines both measures. The term dooring is also applied when such sudden door opening causes the oncoming rider to swerve to avoid collision, with or without loss of control, crash or cause a secondary collision with another oncoming vehicle or another vehicle that is directly next to the cyclist. The term also applies when a door is negligently left open, unduly blocking a travel lane. The width of the door zone in which this can happen varies, depending upon the model of car one is passing. The zone can be almost zero for a vehicle with sliding or gull-wing doors or much larger for a truck.
context_section_description: Motorists and passengers – both front and rear – may be able to make dooring less likely by practicing the "Dutch Reach"  – opening the car door by reaching across the body with the more distant hand which promotes a shoulder check – out and back – to scan for cyclists and other oncoming traffic.
  Reaching across turns one's upper body and head outward. It encourages drivers and front passengers to use the side wing mirror, look out to the side and then over one's shoulder to scan for traffic before opening. Once the door is partly opened, as one leans out one's over-the-shoulder view is now clear, no longer limited by side pillar (car) or door frame. As a further safe-guard against dooring, reaching across curbs wide, sudden opening.
  Even as the maneuver is becoming known elsewhere as the "Dutch Reach", in the Netherlands driving instructors and driving school companies refer to it by description and not by a name. The far hand move is not literally specified by Dutch traffic code to pass the safe parking section of the road test. Rather, Dutch regulations for licensing set two standards to ensure safe exiting of vehicles to protect vulnerable road users (VRUs), viz:  Articles 4e and 6a. 
  As fewer than half of Dutch license applicants pass the examination on first attempt, some but not all Dutch driving instructors and texts for the theory examination teach the far hand maneuver as most assured to demonstrate safe exiting on both the written and road tests. That said, alternative exiting measures may also suffice in modern, bicycle friendly Netherlands. But evidence for such left or near hand instruction awaits documentation.
  The reach method is likely less practiced by Dutch motorists today than in the 1960s–1980s when Dutch road fatalities numbered in the thousands and prompted the Stop the Kindermoord protest movement to end the carnage. Anecdotal reports date the 'reach across' practice to that era. But public awareness of the method in the Netherlands extends at least back to 1961. 
  Since then bicycling in the Netherlands is much safer. Innovative and extensive infrastructure improvements, separate and protected cycle tracks, strict driver education and testing, popular use of bicycles for daily transport and dedication to road safety, all contributed to its dramatic decline in road injuries and fatalities. Yet dooring injuries and even fatalities in the Netherlands still occur, and the far hand method is still taught, though public awareness of it and its practice in the Netherlands has waned.
  As noted above, the far hand technique does not have a Dutch name, but in 2016 an American physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, coined the term to promote the Dutch method which was little known in the United States. 
  The “Dutch Reach” coinage reflects that the method was common to the Netherlands before being 'imported' to the U.S. It was described as a Dutch road safety measure in the American mainstream press in 2011 by the New York Times  and the Boston Globe in 2013.
  The method can be traced beyond northern Europe starting in the 2010s. From 2011 to 2016 several bicycle advocacy organizations and road safety agencies in the United States, Canada and Australia added advisories or launched anti-dooring campaigns which included or featured the far hand countermeasure. In New Haven, CT it was variously called the "Amsterdam", "European cities’" or “reach-across” method (2013). In Fort Collins, CO it became the “Opposite Hand Trick” (2014). However the tip remained nameless in San Francisco, CA (2015);  Montreal (2014), and Vancouver (2016), Canada; New Zealand (2015); and Victoria, Australia (2012). In Australia two slogans have emerged to prompt the habit: "Lead with your left" [origin uncertain]; and "Always Cross Check", devised by a road safety organization. [Note: Drivers in left hand drive countries 'lead with left' to reach across.]
  In early 2017 the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (UK) endorsed the Dutch Reach as the recommended road safety practice to avoid dooring collisions. In 2019, the Natio
caption: Dutch Reach – Use far hand when opening car door
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