What Is NYC Doing To Prevent Cyclists From Getting Fatally Doored? 'Basically Nothing'

What a cyclist sees just before they're about to be doored

On Monday morning, Em Samolewicz, an artist and teacher living in Sunset Park, was riding her bike in Brooklyn when she was forced into traffic by the open door of a parked van. She was subsequently crushed to death by a truck driver, becoming the eighteenth cyclist killed in a year that had already seen the most fatalities to date in the Vision Zero era.

The growing death count now allows for some alarmingly specific data points: Samolewicz joins Hugo Garcia as the second victim of 2019 killed by a driver flinging open a door on this particular stretch of Third Avenue, a winding eight-lane street directly below the Gowanus Expressway. In Samolewicz's case, the van driver admitted that he did not look behind him, noting, "if there was at least a bike lane, it would be much safer.”

Getting doored, as its known, poses a routine and increasingly deadly hazard for New York City cyclists, who are expected to ride in the street "as far to the right as is practicable." Of the eight cyclists who've been killed by dooring since 2014, five have come in the last 16 months. The NYPD does not keep track of dooring injuries, but the Department of Transportation has called such collisions a leading threat to cyclists.

While carelessly opening a car door into traffic is illegal, the NYPD has been reluctant to enforce the existing laws. 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 Samolewicz's 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").

Michael Padwee, whose son Aaron was fatally doored into traffic while biking in Long Island City last year, has experienced the NYPD's indifference firsthand. The spokesperson's comments are "enraging," he said, and served as further proof that the city does not take dooring seriously.

"When my son was killed, the police actually said to me that woman was wrong in throwing her door open like she did," he told Gothamist on Tuesday. "But they also said that the [District Attorney, Richard Brown] was not going to charge her with anything, so there's essentially nothing that could be done."

Surveillance video of the crash, which Gothamist is publishing for the first time below, shows a door suddenly opening into Aaron Padwee's path and launching him under the wheels of a truck—a clear violation of state and city laws that prohibit drivers and passengers from opening their door until it is safe to do so. (The impact takes place around the 3:15 mark; Warning: the footage is graphic.)

The driver was ultimately charged eleven months later with unsafe door opening, a traffic violation that carries a $138 fine. The van driver who doored Samolewicz received the same charge on Tuesday.

But an attorney for the family, Steve Vaccaro, says that fatal doorings represent a clear violation of the Right-of-Way Law, and should thus trigger criminal charges.

"We relegate cyclists into the dooring zone, but then we don't respect their right of way to be there," said Vaccaro. While the attorney says that dooring incidents are easily the most common type of cyclist injury that his firm handles, Vaccaro is unaware of a single instance of the Right-of-Way Law being used to prosecute the behavior.

Beyond concerns of enforcement, advocates also point to a broader failure of the city and state to preempt the crashes through education. For decades, motorists in the Netherlands have been in the habit of using their far hand to open a car door, thereby forcing them to swivel their bodies and check for oncoming bike traffic.

(Courtesy of the Dutch Reach Project)

The maneuver, known as the "Dutch Reach," has been adopted throughout bike-friendly cities in Europe, and is increasingly finding support in the United States. Both Illinois and Massachusetts have added the technique to their state's driving manuals, and some local police departments have mounted public safety campaigns encouraging the hand swap.

By comparison, New York has done "basically nothing," according to Dr. Michael Charney, who founded the Dutch Reach Project three years ago, after a 27-year-old was fatally doored near his home in Cambridge.

So far, there's been no indication that the state intends to embrace the practice. Though city officials have occasionally alluded to the Dutch Reach, Charney says their commitment to spreading awareness of the life-saving measure has been noticeably lacking.

Since 2012, the DOT and the Taxi & Limousine Commission have made "Look for Cyclists" window decals available—but not mandatory—for professional drivers, along with an accompanying PSA that plays in TaxiTV. For the first time this year, the city's transportation department also included questions about the Dutch Reach in their July survey of drivers.

But those efforts are not reaching as many New Yorkers as they could be, says Charney, in part due to apparent disinterest from Mayor Bill de Blasio. Despite adoption in other cities' Vision Zero programs, the mayor only learned about the method last month, when someone called into his weekly segment on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show to ask why the city wasn't promoting the Dutch Reach.

"I have never heard of it before either and obviously, you know, this city, I've been entirely devoted to Vision Zero," de Blasio responded. He then endorsed the practice in a tweet. But when the city released its 24-page safe cycling plan a month later, it made no mention of the Dutch Reach, or other efforts to reduce dooring.

"This is the first and only tweet that he has put out about it, as far as I know," said Charney, adding that the city should consider a sustained social media campaign around the Dutch Reach, or on-the-ground initiatives like traffic signs urging drivers to exercise caution when exiting their vehicles. The mayor could also provide explicit instructions about dooring enforcement to the NYPD, the advocate notes, since currently officers "don't seem to regard this as a serious issue."

"It's part of driving to exit your car safely, and if you fail to do so it's just as horrific as if you killed someone by speeding," Charney told Gothamist. "I see no reason to be tame about negligent homicide and manslaughter."

Listen to Shumita Basu discuss dooring on WNYC: