I had thought about trying to get my stickers into cab windows. The closest I came was to stick a random one on the back of a seat here and there. Unfortunately I was not organized or funded well enough to get the idea off the ground. The good news is however The San Francisco Bike Coalition did a great thing back in 04 by teaming up with the city and some Taxi companies by securing placement of these stickers in taxi windows to promote the awareness of the potential of getting into a Car door accident while exiting a taxi cab.
I haven't found any statistics to prove that they have been effective or not but I'll tell you this, It can't hurt.
On the road it's called "dooring", the open door to disaster. The driver of a parked car opens the door without looking behind for approaching bicyclists. The biker either hits the door or swerves into the traffic lane, either option can be lethal. In a cooperative world the biker would see the driver in the parked car, signal to the traffic behind him and then take the lane to avoid the "door zone". The message in this short video is simple: Watch for doors, Signal, Take the lane, ShareTheRoad.
This report was written by Mai Martinez for CBS. Check out the link at the end of the story. They have a heartbreaking video version of the story posted that demands viewing. —Jerry
June 10, 2008
CHICAGO (CBS) ― A Chicago cyclist, who was hit and killed by an SUV after crashing into an open car door, was remembered Tuesday as a loving young man with a bright future ahead of him.
As CBS 2's Mai Martinez reports, he had recently taken up cycling and was looking forward to his first summer of riding in Chicago.
Those who knew Clint Miceli said he was almost always smiling. It was that trademark smile and his wonderful sense of humor his friends said that they'll miss most.
At Plan B Advertising, where the 22-year-old worked, his co-workers said that if they wanted something done, or just wanted a good laugh, Miceli's desk was the place to be.
Tuesday, that desk had the opposite effect as his friends realized that Miceli was really gone.
Friend and co-worker Mitch Cooper said, "I don't know how you replace that. Probably you're lucky if you do."
Miceli was killed Monday as he was biking home from work on North LaSalle Street. His friends said a child opened the door of a parked car and Miceli crashed into it.
The impact sent Miceli into the nearby intersection, where he was struck and killed by a passing car.
Friend and co-worker Ric van Sickle said, "It's not someone you can point a finger at and assign blame to, it's just a tragic accident."
Miceli's friends hope a memorial -- a white bicycle with his photograph pasted to it -- will remind people of how precious life is and how easily it can be taken away. They said that drivers and cyclists need to be more aware of their surroundings and more respectful of each other
"Cycling is dangerous, and it comes down to making sure that you're ready before you head out into the streets," van Sickle said.
It was a sentiment echoed by many who bike in Chicago.
Cyclist Dave Sienko said, "You've got to look both ways. One thing everybody should be careful about is opening a door. Certainly, that's pretty obvious to me."
For now, Miceli's friends have said only one thing gives them comfort. "I know he was doing something he loved, and a grin on his face in the seconds before he was taken away," van Sickle said.
The driver of the parked car was cited for opening a car door in traffic. The driver of the car which hit Miceli was not ticketed.
I had to share this thoughtful article written by Jen Chung from Gothamist. She has also included various links to other interesting media coverage of this sad story. —Jerry December 6, 2007
Smith lived on West 9th Street and worked as an engineer at Town Hall in midtown. His partner of 36 years John Moody said that he had an early day because he was helping prepare a show for school children: "He was looking to come home early this afternoon after he finished the show; it was just a routine day." Smith was already dead by the time Moody made it to Bellevue.
The Post calls it a "FREAK MISHAP," but given that Smith was cycling in the bicycle lane, which is designated for cyclists, we don't know how much of a freak accident it could be. Some witnesses do say that Smith was not wearing a helmet. The truck's driver wasissued summonsesfor parking in front of a fire hydrant and blocking the bike lane while the truck's passenger was issued a summons for "opening a door unsafely."
Times-Up will be having its3rd Annual Memorial Ride on January 6, 2008. Smith is the 22nd known person to be killed while biking in 2007; that's up from 14 in 2006. And earlier this week, Transportation Alternativesreleased CrashStat 2.0, a map showing locations of incidents where pedestrian and bicycles have been hit by vehicles.
This is my knee on the day of the accident. I was biking down Bulevardi (hereafter referred to as The Death Trap Bicycle Lane From Hell) when a taxi passenger opened his car door into my lane. It all happened so, so fast, and I was in shock, joking around and laughing and apologising and not actually feeling any pain for about an hour and a half, after which this started to sting like a mother. No mechanical damage, it would seem, and I've been icing it in a way that's probably melting glaciers somewhere. But it's gonna photograph well, I says. (From October 11, 2007)
I have been fortunate enough not to have had any "door prizes" since I started riding a bicycle since I was a little kid - the 70's. However, I have had some nonfatal, near-misses.Always watch the parked cars!
After checking out this site check out Riin's Rants, The Door Zone Project. A small site with some disturbing facts on deaths caused by "dooring"Check out http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Eriin/bikes/
Jeepers I've been an urban cyclist for 51 years now and I've never been doored.
But, almost, of course. I am always vigilant that it could happen, and besides, the best advice is that given by the Leauge of American Bicyclists: Do not ride in the door zone. OK, OK, easier said than done on skinny streets with two busses or two Hummers trying to pass each other- AND a bicyclist or two, all converging in the same space at the same time. WATCH OUT especially for those grand old Cadillacs, a two door '77 Biarritz Caddy has doors half the size of a football field. The two door cars are always most dangerous, those doors have to be much bigger than the four-doored vehicles to allow any access to any back seat or stowage area.
Anyhow if any of you bikers out there would like to hack, or help, it seems the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is ignoring my plea of many years ago to configure cars so the driver door SLIDES back. Such an arrangement helps protect kids who may prematurely jump out of a back door into the street side, a slider prevents this too, and hundreds of kids die from this every year, too. You all can think I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Please realize almost every FEDEX and USPS and UPS truck in the US already has a sliding back driver door, and the Honda Odyssey's sophisticated electronics sliding back prove it could be done on any car, the only thing missing is the mandate. How about an internet campaign to get a mandate rolling so bikers can stop taking it on the chin?
My name is James Doherty. I live in Jerry Brown's Oakland, just across the Berkeley, California border. I can bicycle to free speech famous Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley in just about 10 minutes on one of my hyper bikes. I'm a member of several bike clubs, including the aformentioned League, and am now webpublishing some great stuff on urban biking. I rode Berkeley's Critical Mass last Friday and had a great time. Check out http://www.danceswithbicycles.org/, http://www.freewebs.com/bicyclesrus and see my bike warrior pedal-powered rants on the UN Environmental Programme indexed http://www.CultureChange.org/
"For city bicycling to catch on we need a revolution in our society's infrastructure. Right now a city rider needs to be a road warrior, and the bike needs to be cheap and ugly so it won't get stolen. That's not a bike friendly culture." - Gary Fisher
These images are two several taken by Robert Winters for the Cambridge Civic Journal regarding the July 2nd 2002 fatality of cyclists Dana Laird. Dana was run over and killed as she swerved to avoid a car door on Mass Ave. It has been posted here with Roberts permission. Soon I'll be adding a separate photo page to display more photos Robert took at the scene and other general photography related to Car Door accidents. Until then please visit Roberts site to view more photos of this unfortunate incident.
Additional information: Go to the_ "Feburary 2005" section at the bottom of this page. There you'll find a post by Matthew Pickett who's brother knew Dana.
Go to the_ links section under "magazine articles" to read the Boston Phoenix account of the accident.
Here's my story: It was just before 6pm on November 5, 2001, and I was pedaling down the San Francisco streets on my way to the train station for the evening commute home. Night falls early in November, and the daylight was fading. In those days my bike didn't have a headlight. And although I wear a helmet, I hadn't put it on; it dangled from my handlebars.I was keeping close to the right-hand side of the street and traveling at a pretty quick clip when I saw a car door opening in front of me. I swerved, but not enough to avoid clocking the door with my right pedal. My launched into the air like a missile. I remember flying, thinking about what landing would be like. I crashed into the pavement and realized that I had gotten off lightly. Rather than smashing my head, I had merely scraped my nose against the asphalt. I had instinctively put out my left hand - my dominant hand - to break the fall.The guy in the car didn't even get out to check on me; he closed the door and sat silently in his car as I picked myself up. Then I noticed that my wrist was hurting, and my only thought was to get ice on it ASAP. I ran into a nearby eatery and got a bag of ice, then picked up my bike and walked to the train station. I forgot all about the guy who had doored me.I thought my wrist was sprained, but it turned out that I had broken my left scaphoid, a tiny carpal bone that often fractures in the course of a hard fall on an outstretched hand - it's a common injury among skiers, skateboarders, motorcyclists, basketball players, and soldiers dodging incoming ordnance. Even when it's treated properly, it doesn't heal in 10 percent of cases. Over the next several months, I learned that I was in that 10 percent.Here it is, June 2005, and I'm still working on getting my wrist back into shape. I got surgery in late 2002, and which finally healed the fracture, but it left my range of motion compromised, so I put my wrist in a stretching device three times a day. The wrist is pretty functional, but it will never be back to normal; Even if I get the range of motion back, the cartilage damage is permanent, leaving me with an arthritic wrist.If you get doored and you're unfortunate enough to break your scaphoid, my advice is: don't wait to see whether it will heal naturally. Get it surgically fixed right away if you can. You'll avoid a bunch of unpleasant complications that way.
I had thought about trying to get my stickers into cab windows. The closest I came was to stick a random one on the back of a seat here and there. Unfortunately I was not organized or funded well enough to get the idea off the ground. The good news is however The San Francisco Bike Coalition did a great thing back in 04 by teaming up with the city and some Taxi companies by securing placement of these stickers in taxi windows to promote the awareness of the potential of getting into a Car door accident while exiting a taxi cab.
