Governor Pat Quinn has announced that the state will begin to track “dooring” crashes, which occur when the door of a parked vehicle is opened in the path of a bicyclist.  Previously, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) policy excluded dooring crashes from annual state traffic accident statistics because the motor vehicles involved in such collisions are not moving.  The issuegained prominence when Jon Hilkevitch of the Chicago Tribune reported on it last month.

The new rules, which take effect immediately, require police to record all dooring accidents on their traffic crash forms.  The dooring data will be incorporated into annual crash summaries and reports compiled and prepared by IDOT.

This is a significant step as many communities are investing in bike lanes and shared lane pavement markings that are often deployed to reduce dooring crashes.  Having better data on dooring will help to identify the best locations for such markings and may improve the effectiveness of such expenditures.