Robin Herman | 12:13

Dooring accidents happen often with bicyclists in New York City. In one case, a minivan broke a rider’s hand and it settled for $95,000. Why do they happen so often? And why is it important that the rider gets as much information as possible before leading the scene?

Glenn Herman | 12:32

Glenn Herman, explains what a door in cases and why it’s very important for the injured cyclist to get the information at the scene. In New York, there’s a specific statute. It’s called Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 214, which is current as of September of 2026. And the statute specifically says that no person may open a door, on the traffic side, unless and until it’s reasonably safe to do so. Now note the words, no person, a passenger who opens the rear door or the side passenger door into oncoming cyclists is covered under that statute the same as the person behind the wheel. As well as the owner of the car in New York. Now, in these cases, we need the information for the vehicle, the license plate. I mean, of course, the name of the passenger, the name of the driver, and sometimes cars drive away, after a during accident. We’ve had cases where client badly injured, didn’t get a license plate, and none of the surveillance cameras were able to record it. We did extensive investigations with the police department, but We had no defendant and this was someone who was seriously injured. So it’s really important if you’ve been in a during situation, get the information as much as you can. I know a lot of times you just can’t. They have to ask somebody at the scene and get that information for you. In our case, we had a rider someone opened the door right into him, hand injury and we had several for $95,000.