Sample Letters to DMV & Officials

Below are sample letters to help activists spur interest and action for the inclusion of the Dutch Reach in their state's driver's manual or code, licensing exam and road test. The first sample letter is to the Director of Licensing or whomever oversees the licensing curriculum and tests. Due to security requirements at the motor vehicle department, it may be difficult to attain contact with the Licensing Director. The DMV or state DOT website may provide an online form, an ombudsman contact or other indirect means to forward your letter to the Director.

If that route proves techically or bureaucratically impervious or you wish to add authority to your request, then.

You can ask one of your elected state officials to forward it to the Licensing Director and request a response and/or opportunity to speak, meet or correspond. Sample cover letters for your state or local officials - are provided.

It would be well to telephone and speak directly to your elected official or a staff member when you are about to email your cover letter and your companion letter to the Licensing Director. That way you can help assure your letters get proper attention and you will have established contact and awareness with the official or staff should you wish or need to enlist their further assistance.

Gaining the support of your elected official for the Dutch Reach would of course be most helpful, but even if the official is non-commital, it would be their normal duty to forward your petition letter to the DMV and help obtain an informative response.

If the Licensing Director or staff show interest on the merits, you are on your way! If not, you may need to recruit support in the form of greater advocacy, expert authority or other stakeholder interest groups and apply pressure either by further petitioning of the DMV/DOT or additional political figures.

If the DMV/Licensing declines to add or even consider the Reach, then the legislative route may be the only or preferred way to proceed. A Dutch Reach bill could compell inclusion by the DMV, place it into the highway code in some fashion and even require it become a potential question on the written licensing exam and/or observed for in the road test.

DMV Director

Sample Letter to State Director of Licensing to add Dutch Reach to Driver's Manual

To: Addressee
State DMV / DOT/ Dept of Public Safety/ Licensing /.

Re: Add Dutch Reach 'dooring' countermeasure to Driver's Manual/Licensing Tests

To the Director of Licensing,

Open vehicle doors are dangerous - at times lethal - for bicyclists. To increase road sharing safety for bicyclists and other vulnerable road users, I urge you to add the 'Dutch Reach' dooring countermeasure to the next revision of [our state's] Driver’s Manual.

Doorings are among the most common bike-vehicle collisions in our older, dense cities with rising numbers of bicyclists taking to our streets.* [If you have dooring data or names of victims killed or seriously injured from your major cities, cite it here or as footnote]. Training new drivers and establishing the Reach as [our state's] best practice for safe egress of vehicles will reduce the future toll.

I hope the [DMV/DOT. ] is already aware of and already evaluating this best practice. It is already in the driver’s handbooks of Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington and Pennsylvania. The National Safety Council and AAA recommend its use, as does the UK’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

Full information may be found at the Dutch Reach Project website, www.dutchreach.org and at ‘Official’s Dutch Reach Instruction Guide: https://www.dutchreach.org/dutch-reach-instructions-2/

The Guide details the multiple safety advantages of the ‘reach’ method compared to the near hand habit. It also contains a gallery of current Dutch Reach advisories of the above states and of road safety entities here and abroad.

Also the Dutch Reach entry in Wikipedia has a well-referenced overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooring#Dutch_Reach

You may be interested to know that [Cite relevant in- or out of state examples, eg: San Francisco MTA for Vision Zero SF, NYC’s Taxi & Limousine Commission, City of Albany’s Police Dept, etc.] have each produced road-sharing videos which teach the ‘reach’, and the Governors Highway Safety Association cites it in its 2017 study A Right to the Road Understanding & Addressing Bicyclist Safety, (p. 58).

If you find the Dutch Reach a valuable safety measure I hope you will then expedite its inclusion in the manual and promote its adoption by current drivers as well.

[We/I] would be pleased to respond to any questions you or your staff may have as you consider this suggestion.

Thank you for considering this request. [I/we] look forward to your reply.

Signed:
You/ Your organization
Address/Phone/Email
Website

* Dooring Statistics: https://www.dutchreach.org/dooring-problem-prevalence/

Examples of local data, media reports of dooring injuries, deaths

Links: