“Turn around!” – the so-called Dutch grip before exiting is a very simple trick that drivers can use to prevent serious, sometimes even fatal, accidents with the doors. This is the term used for crashes in which cyclists crash into carelessly opened car doors with no way to brake or dodge.
Following the success of the “Handkäs campaign” on the topic of safety distance, the road traffic office blocked 40 buses with the catchy campaign motif, which will now advertise the Dutch handle day after day on 30 different routes in the area of the city out until February 2023. “The message is clear: ‘Park, drive around, save lives,'” says Wolfgang Siefert from the Mobility and Health Department, who sent one of the buses on a tour on Monday, December 19. He added: “Now we’re taking it to the city, right where a lot of people will notice it: in the traffic itself.”
For years, the traffic office has ordered so-called safety separation strips between cycle paths or wheel protection lanes and parking spaces in the side area for all new ceiling designs or renovations. These infrastructure-related efforts are helping to ensure that the number of door accidents has dropped significantly despite the increase in bicycle traffic: while 155 such accidents were recorded by the police in 2017, the total was 87 in 2019 and 67 last year. our vision here is: zero people seriously injured or killed,” Siefert stressed.
(Text: PM City of Frankfurt)
