Man On Electric Scooter Suffers Severe Head Trauma After Getting Doored In Brooklyn

A man on an electric scooter suffered severe head and neck trauma after getting doored by a driver in Brooklyn early this morning, according to the NYPD.

Police say the incident happened around 4:50 a.m. in the vicinity of East 94th Street and Church Avenue near Brownsville. A 44-year-old man was operating an electric scooter westbound on Church when he approached a parked Nissan Pathfinder. The 59-year-old driver of that car opened his driver side door, with the man on the scooter crashing into the open door.

Police and EMS found the victim on the ground unconscious and unresponsive with severe trauma. He was transported to Brookdale Hospital where he is listed in serious but stable condition.

Police could not identify what kind of electric scooter the man was riding at the time. Cops add that the driver remained on the scene, no charges have been filed, and the investigation remains ongoing.

The NYPD does not keep track of injuries caused by opened doors. But overall dooring fatalities seem to be going up: Of the eight cyclists who've been killed by dooring since 2014, five have come in the last 16 months. State law prohibits drivers or passengers from "opening door of a motor vehicle on the side available to moving traffic unless and until it is reasonably safe to do so."

The NYPD has been seemingly reluctant to enforce the existing laws though. Officers in Brooklyn reportedly responded to a recent dooring incident by declining to cite the driver, then inexplicably threatening to issue a summons to the cyclist for riding on Flatbush Avenue. Within hours of a different woman's dooring death, an NYPD spokesperson told Gothamist that there was nothing illegal about opening a door into traffic (presented with evidence otherwise, the spokesperson claimed to be "joking around").