Stay on your bike: how to stop car doors hitting cyclists

I feel like every cyclist on our roads is my colleague, not just those who ride for Great Britain. That’s why I want to put a stop to car-dooring, the simple but dangerous act of opening your car door into a cyclist.

The consequences are grim. One of the British Cycling team girls was coming into a training session when somebody opened a car door in front of her. She had no time to react and ploughed straight into it, breaking her ribs.

But the statistics are what really worry me. It’s not just the 65 per cent of cyclists who have either been car-doored themselves or know somebody who has. It’s the 54 per cent of those who are injured and the 78 per cent of them who are hospitalised. And the 43 per cent who say they never want to cycle again.

I know how it feels to come off your bike. A few weeks ago I was cycling in a Madison — a relay race — and the teams, instead of being in order, were all over the place. Realising that I needed to slow down I did so but my partner came in, accidentally dragged me off my bike and down I went. It hurt so much — it was a shock. But I remembered what my mum always used to say to me — “just get straight back on”. And she was right. I got back on and soon the memory began to fade and I started feeling better.

So I hate the idea that car-dooring is making so many people give up cycling. We’re all part of the same group and fallers shouldn’t feel cowed. But they shouldn’t be hitting car doors in the first place.

It starts with motorists. I’ve teamed up with private hire company Addison Lee to set up a deceptively simple campaign. Whether you’re driving or a passenger, when you want to open the door reach across to the handle with your far hand, not your near one. As you lean over your body naturally turns, meaning you get a view of the road behind you and anything coming, such as cyclists.

I know some car drivers will be outraged and think this is the fault of cyclists who pedal too close to cars, inviting risk. I know, too, that it’s not a simple equation: bikes good, cars bad. Like millions of others I watched with horror the recent video of cyclists overtaking and undertaking a horse rider recently, terrifying the animal. Behaviour like this gives cyclists a bad name. We all have to share the road.

But car-dooring isn’t about who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong. It’s about an easy practical measure we can all do and reduce these terrible accidents. If we can stop even just one person getting car-doored that would be a success for me. The possible injury really is that bad. The manoeuvre isn’t new — it’s part of the Dutch driving test. Now it’s time that it became part not of our driving tests but our culture.

• Laura Kenny is a four-time Olympic champion in cycling. She has launched the Addison Lean, a manoeuvre which aims to help reduce car-dooring incidents.