Opening your car door properly can save lives
For many people, their driving lessons were years ago, but remember what your rowing-man said to you before you got off? Always look in the mirror and over your shoulder before you open the door! Unfortunately habits wear out and you drive after a while on the autopilot. Many people therefore open their car door without thinking too, because their thoughts are in a completely different place. That is why this clever trick was invented: always open the door with your right hand.
This little act can make a big difference.
To get off
You are in a hurry, so park the car quickly and get out as quickly as possible. What is going wrong here? Precisely, you no longer consciously think about your actions. Have you looked in the mirror? And over your shoulder? A cyclist can arrive! This is very important in our country, because there are so many cyclists. That’s why we all learned to look carefully in our mirror and over our shoulder before opening the car door.
Left hand
Okay, that a cyclist can get in, we know. Mirror, shoulder, open door. Why then can not we open our car door with our left hand? This is actually a clever trick to remind you to watch. When you open the door with your left hand, you are still sitting with your nose facing the front of the car. It is then very easy to forget to look. When you open the car door with your right hand, you must turn around a bit and look automatically in the mirror and through the side window.
Accidents
Unfortunately, many accidents happen with cars and cyclists. Cyclists can come rushing with an emergency and hit a door that has been folded open when the driver just opens it. That is why it is so important that a car driver looks good! Because these kinds of accidents often happen in the Netherlands – we now have a lot of cyclists – it is also called the Dutch reach. So, teach yourself to now open the car door with your right hand so that you are forced to look closely and look at the arriving traffic with your face.