Dutch reach
Dutch reach noun: a technique for opening a motor vehicle door to avoid striking (“dooring”) passing cyclists or other road users by reaching across the body for the door latch with the more distant hand.
Noun
the Dutch reach
- A technique for opening a motor vehicle door to avoid striking (“dooring”) passing cyclists or other road users by reaching across the body for the door latch with the more distant hand.
- It is proposed that the code will highlight the Dutch reach, a method of opening car doors by turning and using the hand furthest from the handle, which forces drivers or passengers to look behind them for passing cyclists.2018 October 17, Gwyn Topham, “Highway Code to promote ‘Dutch reach’ to protect cyclists”, in The Guardian
Origin of Dutch reach
The term was coined by an American physician in 2016 for the purpose of promoting the far hand reach method to prevent dooring. The Dutch language has no special name for the maneuver. The first known description of the method appeared in 1961 in a Dutch newspaper.
Questions about Dutch reach
- What does Dutch reach mean?
- Dutch reach means a technique for opening a motor vehicle door to avoid striking (“dooring”) passing cyclists or other road users by reaching across the body for the door latch with the more distant hand.
- What part of speech is Dutch reach?
- Dutch reach is a noun.
Words near Dutch reach in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Dutch reach (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “Dutch reach.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dutch_reach. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.