It all started back in 1996 when a Town-Taxi sheared the drivers side door clean off of a vehicle I was exiting.
Fresh out of college I took a gig as an installation manager for Boston Corporate Art, a local art gallery that catered to larger sized clients from retirement homes to investment firms to hospitals.
One day I was working on an install at Boston’s Children's Hospital with my partner Jeff. As I approached the Hospital in our standard work type van it was clear parking was going to be difficult and we had passed the front door a couple of times so I thought I'd run in to let my contact know we had arrived and were looking for parking (pre-cell phone days).
I found an opening where I could pull over for a minute, leaving my partner Jeff to watch the van. Pretty routine stuff. Before I opened my door I looked in my side mirror—all clear, I glanced the rear view—all clear, then as soon as I opened the door…
CRAAAAAAAAACK!
Glass bits flew through the air. I heard the sound of screaching tires and the dull crunching of metal. Jeff and I instinctively jumped for cover. I looked up seconds later to catch the rear end of a Town Taxi slide around the corner to the right and out of site.
The door to the truck was left dangling at a 60 degree angle into the street held on by what was left of the lower hinge, the other hinge had been ripped clean off the door jam.
The fender was creased. Window glass was shattered in a million little fragments all around, on the dashboard, all over my legs, in my hair.
I couldn't believe what had just happened!
They were not there a second ago!
The cabs' side mirror was left spinning amidst the plastic and glass debris in the street. I was freaked, Jeffs face had that authentic blank expression you get when you just caught enough signal to know that something really bad just happened but you were ok. We started laughing, screaming "Holy Shit!" over and over and over.
This was not the actual Town Taxi mentioned in the story but it’s from the exact make and model from the same era. I happened to find it in a stack of old photo’s I took around that time.
At that point I hadn’t been driving in the city long and hadn’t thought that anything was close enough to me to get hit by the door. Once I got over the fact it was a car that close and having been an active mountain biker for years it dawned on me that could just as easily been a cyclist.
What if that was a cyclists? I might have killed them.
I never thought about opening a car door the same way again.
Inspired by the messengers I saw riding through the streets of Boston I left my Art Installation job and started riding for Boston Bike, a farm league of sorts. It was one of the bigger outfits started by an x-Messenger named Paul who started the business with money he received as part of a settlement after getting hit by a car on his bicycle. A year and a half later I was messengering in the holy grail of messenger cities… San Francisco. By this time I had graduated to riding for a consortium of smaller messenger companies. Adios and Red Hot were the main pair and for a brief stint I rode for Lickety Split as well.
As a messenger close calls with car doors were a daily constant. I learned to pick up on the slightest signals a door was about to open by looking through the rear window for signs of movement. That strategy worked well until it failed to detect a woman who when I was approaching was lying on her side in the back seat of a taxi and proceeded to kick the door open with her foot!
This picture was taken by Lori Spears for the San Francisco Bay Guardian roughly a year after I stopped messengering. I still ride that old Schwinn Steel lug touring frame regularly.
As I passed 333 Bush traffic got tighter but was still moving, just coming to a stop. I split the lane when Before I knew it BAM! The side of a taxi door made contact, scraping the length of my forearm. I saw flashes of legs, a tan skirt, the door and bags. The impact wrenched the handlebars away from me, I lost contrtol. The front wheel seemed to flop from one side to the other. I managed to stop the bike awkwardly after bouncing off a few cars nearly 20 feet past the moment of impact.
I was stunned, after years of biking in city streets I finally caught a door. Looking back I saw a flustered middle aged woman slam the taxi door shut while frantically grabbing her belongings.
“Hey you just hit me!” I yelled.
”Fuck you, I don’t have time for this shit”
she barked while flipping me the bird and running into the crowded sidewalk”
Now I was really in shock my arm was soaked in blood, throbbing, my bike was laying in the street as the light turned green as the taxi sped away.
Adrenaline kicked in. The bike was to damaged to ride. I took off after her on foot dragging the crippled bicycle beside me. A block ahead she was gruffly pushing her way through the crowded sidewalk. I was determined to catch up with her.
Minutes later, just as I got within a few yards she did a 180, her hair whipping around and screamed "What the fuck do you want from me?" I screamed back at her "You just fucking hit me with the taxi door! What the fuck lady?”.
She immediately burst into tears and began explaining how she is raising her kids alone and was late for an important job interview and that she desperately needs this job and so on. While I could empathize with her predicament I cut her short to remind her that I was struggling to make ends meet too and working when she hit me on my bicycle and was probably going to loose a days pay or more as a result of her careless actions.
Banged up and bloody I was pretty sure nothing was broken. I told her I was going to be ok all I wanted was for her to apologize for causing me physical harm, to acknowledge what had just happened. Finally she calmed down, took a few deep breaths and apologized. I thanked her. She apologized again and ran into the lobby of a building on Kearny street.
Returning to the scene of the accident multiple people, including the concierge of 333 Bush asked if I was ok. Just then a pair of police cars arrived, the concierge had called and a sweet pedestrian offered to make a witness statement to the police in my behalf.
This all happened in under ten minutes, I started to calm down and catch my breath.
Spending years cycling on the city streets of Boston and San Francisco I became more involved in cyclists rights, volunteering and even doing some illustrations for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
The Tubular Times was a publication of the San Francisco Bike Coalition (SFBC). A non-profit group advocating for cyclists rights. This image depicted how I felt everyday. It took me a while to get used to riding the streets of San Francisco.
As a messenger I was exhausted fearing car doors day in, day out. So I decided to start a campaign to create awareness of the issue of car dooring. At the time as an aspiring illustrator I would sketch in between running deliveries or “tags”. This is where the idea for the sticker came into focus. It took me a while, due to lack of funds to get the first stickers printed in 2001. Since then I’ve refined the design of the sticker and in 2005 added this website to help capture individual stories of dooring incidents both from news outlets and firsthand accounts sent in by readers.
The site was live and active from 2005—2008 and then live again around 2011—2012. With the advent of Covid-19 and the surge in people riding bicycles again it felt like the right time to get the site back up and running. If this message saves a single life then the past 20 years of effort to raise awareness has totally been worth it.
I can't count how many people that have told me they want to ride in the city but they're afraid. Thats a sad situation and it doesn’t have to be this way. Cities should be bike safe. We all need to respect and look out for one another on the streets. That goes for both sides car drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
Browse the Reports section to read through accounts of car door accidents reported by local news and first hand accounts of actual car door accidents by folks who have sent in their story to me over the years. If you have a car door related story or picture you'd like to post, send it to me and be sure to include your name, town and country.
Ride smart, stay safe and look before you open a car door.
☮️ &❤️
Jerry Business