Sometimes it takes a celebrity to draw attention to a deficiency that less prominent people have been fighting against for a long time. In this case, the trigger is particularly sad. Actress Wanda Perdelwitz, known in Germany primarily from public television, died in autumn 2025 after a dooring accident. Now, the current federal government is specifically addressing this type of accident. It is proposing the idea of mandatory technical assists for motor vehicles.
1. Dooring: Deadly danger from carelessly opening car doors
2. More electronics for better protection
3. Wider bike lanes with special ‘dooring zones’
4. Dutch Reach: A simple trick for greater safety
5. Background: Dooring accidents in Germany
1. Dooring: Deadly danger from carelessly opening car doors
Dooring accidents are not recorded separately in standard accident statistics. Dooring refers to an accident in which cyclists fall after colliding with a car door that has suddenly opened just before they pass it. People on motorcycles, scooters and similar modes of transport are also at risk.
This is exactly how Wanda Perdelwitz had her accident on 28 September 2025. In the Rotherbaum district of Hamburg, she wanted to pass a stationary van on the right-hand side of the bike lane. The door opened by the passenger caused the 41-year-old to fall. On 10 October 2025, she succumbed to the consequences of her severe head injuries in a Hamburg hospital. The death of the actress, known among other things from the TV series ‘Großstadtrevier’, subsequently brought the discussion about dooring onto the agenda of the media and politicians nationwide.
2. More electronics for better protection
Following Perdelwitz’s death, the Federal Ministry of Transport has now put forward proposals on how such accidents can be prevented in future. According to these proposals, Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder, CDU, considers the technical equipment of modern motor vehicles to be a lever for change. Certain assistance systems are capable of detecting the car’s surroundings and alerting passengers to approaching cyclists and other road users.
This could refer, for example, to systems featuring V2X. These create a digital network in which cars, ebikes, regular bikes, other modes of transport and vehicles, as well as infrastructure, recognise each other within a certain radius. The movements of vehicles within a cluster are displayed to each other. Messages on the display allow passengers in a car to recognise an approaching bicycle. When the bicycle is directly passing by, such systems could even lock the car doors on the relevant side, thereby preventing dooring accidents.
Cycling advocacy group supports government plans
The Allgemeine Deutsche Fahrrad-Club e. V. (ADFC) has signalled its approval of such plans. In its view, solutions involving door warning systems and an automatic emergency stop system can make a decisive contribution to reducing the number of dooring accidents in the future. “It is important that these systems are used on both the driver’s and passenger’s sides. This is because cycle paths often run to the right of car parking spaces. However, cycle paths are often missing, and cyclists are forced to ride on the left-hand side of parked cars,” said ADFC Federal Managing Director Dr Caroline Lodemann.
The government and Germany’s largest association representing the interests of cyclists seem to be on the same wavelength. So, is everything fine? Unfortunately, not quite. After all, the solutions mentioned cannot be implemented in motor vehicles overnight. And even when they are, this will probably only happen in new vehicles at first. So, what about the transition phase and the cars that will still lack these door warning systems afterwards?
3. Wider bike lanes with special ‘dooring zones’
One of the alternatives is better bike lanes. Better in this case ideally means structurally separated from the traffic lane and wider. The second requirement alone would make cycling noticeably safer in many places. In the case of Wanda Perdelwitz, who was killed, the bike lane at the scene of the accident was only 1.85 metres wide. The door of the vehicle involved in the accident alone was probably easily a metre wide. This leaves basically no room to successfully avoid the door.
In principle, bike lanes around two metres wide would be sufficient. However, this would require cars to park at a distance of 1.5 metres from the bike lane. This would ensure that they maintain the minimum distance that also applies when overtaking a bicycle within a built-up area. In many places, this is not feasible, as cars that comply with the requirement would completely block the traffic lane. This, in turn, increases the risk of other accidents.
For the ADFC, there is therefore no way around new standards for bike lanes. “When it comes to dooring, we need to take a closer look: If a person on a bike crashes into a carelessly opened car door, there is a lack of a safe bike lane. The focus here must be on ensuring that good bike lanes are constructed with sufficient safety distance from parked cars. This so-called ‘dooring zone’ ensures that cyclists do not have to ride through the dangerous door zone in the first place,” explains Dr Caroline Lodemann.
4. Dutch Reach: A simple trick for greater safety
Both driver assistance systems and wider bike lanes will take some time to implement. Fortunately, there is one small thing we can all do right now to help prevent cases like Wanda Perdelwitz’s from happening again. It’s all about the way we open car doors. Most of us probably use the hand closest to the car door. On the driver’s side, that would be the left hand, and on the passenger side, the right.
However, if we reverse this principle, we suddenly take a much better view of the other road users around us. If we are sitting on the driver’s side and open the door with our right hand, our upper body automatically turns towards the road. What was previously in our blind spot suddenly comes into our natural field of vision. We notice other vehicles and people more quickly and can better time the moment to open the door. The same applies when we operate the door handle on the passenger side with our left hand.
Opening car doors in this way is part of every driving school in the Netherlands. This little trick has become second nature to our neighbours. That is why it is also known as the ‘Dutch Reach’. Imitation is explicitly encouraged. 😉
5. Background: Dooring accidents in Germany
Nationwide accident statistics do not list door-opening accidents separately in Germany. However, according to the ADFC, regional statistics allow conclusions to be drawn about the extent of this particular type of accident involving parked vehicles. In Cologne, for example, a total of 120 such incidents were recorded in 2024. In Berlin, the figure was 435. This puts dooring in third place in the sad ranking of the main causes of accidents involving cyclists. Data from insurers’ accident research is already somewhat older. In a 2020 study, it found that almost 20 per cent of all bicycle accidents were related to parked cars.
Pictures: ADFC e. V.; ADFC Landesverband Hamburg e. V.; Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC); Elektrofahrrad24 GmbH