Dooring Statistics & Measurement Issues

For dooring statistics in Victoria, Australia as of 2019 see VicRoads/ Car doors & bike riders.  Dooring study in Melbourne, Victoria in 2012:  Bicycle Rider Collisions with Car Doors, Road Safety Action Group - Inner Melbourne.  Share and Be Aware, Road Safety Action Grouop submission 2013.  A multi-stage, multi-faceted approach to addressing ‘car dooring’ in inner Melbourne, Bolitho, J11, Road Safety Action Group Inner Melbourne, 2013.  VicRoads updated statistics on dooring 2014-2019.

"Data from the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) shows it received nearly a claim a week from cyclists hit by car doors in 2017, and paid out more than $58,000 in compensation for those accidents that year".

 
What is a 'Dutch Reach' and why every driver should use it New Zealand  Herald, 5 Jan, 2020
 

"In 2018, a student from the Vienna University of Technology discovered for his bachelor's thesis that every tenth accident involving a bicycle in the federal capital was a dooring accident. The risk of accidents was particularly high on narrow multi-purpose strips, where cyclists are led directly past parked cars." -  "DOORING"-UNFÄLLE - Der Griff, der Leben retten kann, Von APA, NÖN.at, Ausland, 11. Mai 2020.

Definitional Issues re: Doorings

Technically, doorings include cyclist or VRU collisions with open or opening vehicle doors and also incidents of victims' forced avoidance of open or opening vehicle doors seeking to prevent collision, by veering, abrupt braking etc., with or without resulting injury.  (See example here.)  Dooring incidents should properly include subsequent crashes due to such evasion tactics.  These include loss of control crashes and secondary collisions with passing traffic, pavement, other stationary objects or with the bike itself.  Damage to the bicycle or motor vehicle without injury, or injury to an exiting occupant, also should be considered a dooring incident.  More comprehensively, doorings include incidents even where potential victims avoid physical harm as negligent travel lane obstruction is an internationally recognized traffic violation.

In practice, however, such near-doorings are seldom if ever included, estimated or even mentioned.  Yet the true frequency of near-dooring incidents is such that it is both under-recognized by the general public and yet a prominent concern among regular urban cyclists.  Fear of doorings based on such personal experience or as common knowledge thus contributes to cyclist insecurity and discourages others from using bicycles for normal transport.

Non-Standard Reporting:

Further complicating the matter, reporting methods and practices are often lacking in quality or accuracy.  Cyclists often do not report minor incidents or injuries. Police report forms are often oriented to vehicle vs vehicle incidents without adequate choices for characterizing doorings or other bicycle crashes.  Even if forms are adequate, police training, ignorance or bias may also degrade reporting - and cyclists are advised to obtain filed police reports after such incidents to determine if the report accurately reflects the surviving cyclist's description of events.  Data based on Emergency Medical Services calls and reports are a subset of doorings - those with initially evident, feared or suspected injury or fatality. More thorough studies of doorings and other cycling crashes with injuries often seek hospital or other medical reports in addition to official police filings.

Statistical Definitions Vary

Furthermore the statistical reports often do use the same standards across official or academic reports as classifying definitions and denominators vary.  Is it a percentage of all bike/vehicle collisions or only those bike/vehicle collisions where the cyclist is deemed not at fault.  Do incidence or prevalence rates include self-reports by cyclists or only police reported documented incidents?  Are 'near-dooring' incidents reflected in official data (and thus influence education, prevention and enforcement efforts)?

Dilution by Extent:  Dooring statistics tallied as a subset of large geographic areas - nation, province, state or county etc. are proportionally reduced if not lost among the total which include all conditions of bicycle use - practical and recreational cycling on rural roads or on trails, mountain biking, road races, and other cycling in suburban and ex-urban expanses.  As a result, such total tallies do not  capture the the endemic nature of doorings - where taxis, ride-share, parallel on-street parking and driver or passenger discharge from and into travel lanes are regular hazards.

Older vs newer cities:  Older cities often have narrower streets where on-street parallel parking also predominates.  Newer cities often have wider streets and feature more angled or off-street parking.  equally populous but differentially dense versus sprawling municipalities will likely have different crash profiles.  In cities with often narrow street widths, parallel on-street parking and higher vehicle & cycling density exist, doorings may be proportionately more frequent.   Research to substantiate this reasonable inference is as yet lacking but it is noteworthy that recent studies reporting high dooring rates come from older and/or denser cities.

Are all types of doorings included?  Are doorings with other vehicles or road users -- joggers, pedestrians, scooters, mopeds, motorcycles, cars, vans, trucks, buses, light rail etc., included in police reports and department statistics?