In 1994 the San Francisco Bike Coalition started a campaign for safe riding after a cyclist was killed by “dooring” — a car door opened suddenly.

“Unfortunately, the usual safety message given to cyclists is to ride to the right, near the parked cars, and watch out for opening doors. That’s the wrong message,” says the group’s Executive Director David Snyder. “What do you do if a door pops open? Swerve into traffic or hit the door? The correct safety message is stay out of the door zone.”

That was the message then. It has changed as most states have passed laws that make it illegal to open a door in the path of anyone. Despite safety warnings and laws, the Door Prize tragic list of car door victims continues to grow.

I noticed that some have trouble applying the “dooring” law. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance gives a good example of why. He came up with the absurd interpretation that killing a cyclist with a car door is only illegal for the driver of the car, not any operator of the door. Note the San Francisco letter of the law, which should make it clear why Vance is dead wrong:

CVC 22517: “No person shall open the door of a vehicle on the side available to moving traffic unless it is reasonably safe to do so and can be done without interfering with the movement of such traffic, nor shall any person leave a door open upon the side of a vehicle available to moving traffic for a period of time longer than necessary to load or unload passengers.”

No person. If we can’t get that part right, we really will get stuck enforcing the more hidden problem (pun not intended) with “dooring” laws.

The interpretation of “side available to moving traffic” is unclear for cyclists, motobikes and pedestrians. They often pass on the right as well as the left of cars. Yet the right side has been treated as different from the left under CVC 21754, due to an automobile-dominated view of what constitutes moving traffic. That soon will have to change.

Seventeen years after the 1994 “dooring” bulletin, San Francisco has begun to add safety zones around parked cars that will protect cyclists from the hazards of automobiles and their passengers. Both sides of cars now will unquestionably have to yield to moving traffic, but more importantly there is a buffer built into the road to help cars more safely operate their doors:

“Floating Parking” & Bike Buffer Zone in Separated Bike Lanes from Streetfilms on Vimeo.