The European Union would like to impose the “Dutch handle”, a very specific way of opening your door to avoid accidents.
In a car, in a street or at the side of a road, we have all been afraid of hitting a bicycle or a motorcyclist when opening our door. It only takes a few seconds to cause an accident. With the increasingly widespread use of electric bicycles and scooters, the number of accidents involving these modes of transport has multiplied in France. According to the 2023 Road Safety report, cyclists and users of EDPM, including in particular electric scooters and gyropods, represent 8% of users killed on the road.
This is why the European Union is considering new methods to protect vulnerable users. There is a technique that has already proven itself in Europe: it is the “Dutch handle”. You may have already heard about this latest arrival from the Netherlands, the country of cycling par excellence, during your coding or driving lessons. It actually consists of opening your door with the hand opposite to it.
What’s the point? This requires you to turn around and therefore check that no user is coming behind your vehicle, and in particular not a cyclist, a motorcyclist or a person on a scooter. With this forced pivot movement, you are no longer facing the road and you obtain better visibility. It’s a bit the same principle as when you check your blind spot while driving. This also prevents you from opening the door too suddenly and abruptly. The EU is therefore considering introducing this safety technique into the highway code of member countries to limit accidents with vulnerable users.
In France, the steering wheel is on the left, so you would have to use your right hand to open your driver’s side door. However, this practice can also be applied to passengers seated at the front right (who will therefore have to open the door with their left hand) or at the rear of the vehicle.
The “Dutch handle” has already been promoted by the Road Safety Delegation during an awareness campaign in 2023. For Thibault Quere, head of advocacy for the French Federation of Bicycle Users, whose comments were reported by Ouest-France, “passing is a real source of fear for cyclists, especially when the road is narrow and the flow of cars forces us to keep to the right of the road”. If this method could one day make its entry into the Highway Code, the “Dutch handle” already appears to be a good habit to get into now. This technique could allow safer cohabitation on the roads.