New website tracks cyclists who get doored in Toronto

Getting "doored" is one of the most horrifying things that can happen to a cyclist, but it doesn't even classify as a collision in Toronto according to the definition police work with, which doesn't account for accidents involving stationary vehicles. Since these incidents aren't tracked, it's difficult to hatch effective strategies for reducing the incidence of "door prizes" in the city. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that accidents of this type are a common occurrence — it seems most active urban cyclists have suffered this uncomfortable experience at least once — but in the absence of data it's difficult to tackle the problem.

Enter a new open source website from Justin Bull called Doorprize. Given that the police don't track dooring cases, Bull is building a platform whereby cyclists can collect this data themselves. It's a simple idea, but should it take off, the statistics could help to identify areas or streets with a high rate of incidence, establish the breadth of the problem, and encourage police to change their definition of a collision such that dooring is included.

Bull is currently soliciting feedback as he builds the site, which he hopes will go live on August 21st. What do you think of the idea? Is it important to track these accidents? How can cyclists who've been doored be encouraged to report the collision?

Photo by Gary Baker in the blogTO Flickr pool.

by Derek Flack via blogTO