Dooring Accidents in Florida

What a Dooring Crash Is

A dooring crash happens when someone in a parked or stopped vehicle opens a door into the path of a passing rider. There are two versions and they injure differently. In the first, the rider strikes the door itself and stops instantly — the classic mechanism for facial, dental, collarbone, and wrist injuries. In the second, the rider swerves to avoid the door and is struck by a vehicle in the adjacent travel lane, which is frequently the more serious of the two.

The second version matters legally as well as medically. The person who opened the door can be responsible for a collision they were never touched by, because the swerve was the foreseeable consequence of the door opening.

An e-bike changes the physics rather than the law. Closing speed is higher, the machine is heavier, and the distance available to react is shorter — but the duties are the same ones that apply to any bicycle, imported by Fla. Stat. § 316.20655(1).

What Florida Law Requires of the Person Opening the Door

Florida has a statute written for exactly this. Fla. Stat. § 316.2005, “Opening and closing vehicle doors,” provides in full:

“No person shall open any door on a motor vehicle unless and until it is reasonably safe to do so and can be done without interfering with the movement of other traffic, nor shall any person leave a door open on the side of a vehicle available to moving traffic for a period of time longer than necessary to load or unload passengers.”

Three things are worth drawing out of that sentence. It says “no person,” not “no driver” — a passenger who flings a rear door open carries the same duty. It requires the opening to be reasonably safe, which is a check the person must perform before the door moves, not a standard measured after the fact. And it separately prohibits leaving a door open into moving traffic longer than loading requires, so a door standing open in the lane is its own breach.

A violation is a noncriminal traffic infraction punishable as a nonmoving violation under chapter 318. That is the traffic consequence. It is not the measure of civil responsibility, and a low infraction level does not translate into a small claim.

Legally Reviewed By

David I. Shiner, Esq.

Founder, Shiner Law Group · AV Preeminent® rated · Florida Bar member since 2002

David I. Shiner founded Shiner Law Group and has been a member of The Florida Bar since 2002. He is a graduate of Nova Southeastern University’s law school and holds an AV Preeminent® rating from Martindale-Hubbell. The firm represents injured people across Florida from offices in Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce, Orlando, Wellington, and Belle Glade, and handles these cases on a contingency basis with free consultations and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.

Content on this page legally reviewed by David I. Shiner, Esq. · Fla. Bar No. 572721 About this site →

The Door Zone, and Why Riding Outside It Is Lawful

Insurers argue that a doored rider was too close to the parked cars. The statute they reach for does not say what they need it to say.

Fla. Stat. § 316.2065(5)(a) requires a person operating a bicycle on a roadway at less than the normal speed of traffic to ride in the bicycle lane or, where there is none, “as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway.” Practicable is not the same word as possible. A row of occupied parked cars is a hazard, and moving left to clear the reach of their doors is precisely the kind of judgment the word is there to permit.

There is a second, more uncomfortable version of the argument. In many Florida towns the painted bicycle lane runs directly through the door zone of the parking bay beside it. A rider using that lane is doing what § 316.2065(5)(a) directs, in the place the road authority painted for them. Where the lane's own design put the rider in the path of the door, the body responsible for the roadway may belong in the case as well — subject to the caps and the presentment deadline in Fla. Stat. § 768.28.

This matters because of the arithmetic. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6) a rider found more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing at all, so a defense does not need to win the argument outright — only to move the apportionment past halfway.

What to Do If You Were Doored

1. Get medical care. Dooring throws a rider forward with no warning and no chance to brace. Facial, dental, and wrist injuries are common, and dental damage in particular is expensive and slow to present.
2. Photograph the door, still open if it is safe to do so. Which door, how far it extended into the lane, and where the vehicle sat relative to the parking bay are the facts the case turns on.
3. Photograph the lane markings. If a painted bicycle lane runs through the door zone, that photograph is doing two jobs at once — it answers the “too close to the cars” argument and it raises the road design question.
4. Identify who opened the door. Driver or passenger, and whether the vehicle was being used for work, rideshare, or delivery. Fla. Stat. § 316.2005 puts the duty on the person, and employment may add a defendant.
5. Get the crash report number. Available to you as a party under Fla. Stat. § 316.066(2)(b) during the 60-day confidentiality period set by § 316.066(2)(a).
6. Preserve the bicycle. Fork and wheel damage corroborate the mechanism, and § 316.20655(3) requires a classification label that records what the machine was.

Frequently Asked Questions