Dan Hayes was riding along Queen St. West on his way to deliver a pizza when he became the latest Toronto cyclist to win the “door prize.”

As he passed a parked car just before Brock Ave., the driver opened his door into Hayes’ path, causing a crash that flung the 40-year-old part-time bike courier into the street and left him with cracked ribs and other injuries.

“Luckily there were no cars coming too when I got sent flying into the road. It was pretty brutal,” Hayes recalled of the July 25 incident.

In the brief moments before an ambulance arrived, Hayes was too dazed and in pain to ask for the insurance information of the driver who “doored” him.

If he’d known the ordeal he’d face following the crash, he might have made a point of getting the man’s policy details.

Hayes’s attempt to file an accident claim with the driver’s insurance provider has left him entangled in a months-long bureaucratic mess stemming from how the provincial government deals with “dooring”— the term used to describe a crash caused by a driver opening a car door into a cyclist.

The Ministry of Transportation says to meet the definition of a motor vehicle collision, a crash “must involve a motor vehicle in motion.” Because vehicles involved in doorings are typically parked, the incidents aren’t considered motor vehicle collisions — and therefore police don’t provide dooring victims with motor vehicle accident reports, which record the parties’ insurance information.

That can leave an injured cyclist with no easy path to access benefits they may be entitled to from the driver’s insurance provider, even though insurance companies do classify dooring incidents as traffic collisions covered by accident insurance.

Hayes and his family say police have said the driver’s information is protected by privacy legislation, and the force will only be able disclose it if Hayes gets a court order.

“I think it’s ridiculous. Any other person gets in any kind of fender bender or something it’s just standard procedure for you to just exchange information and make a claim with the insurance,” Hayes said.

He said he understands police are only following the rules, but the “mind-boggling” experience he’s going through shows “there’s something wrong with the actual process itself.”

Ministry spokesperson Courtney Anderson said while doorings don’t currently meet the definition of motor vehicle collisions, Ontario Progressive Conservative Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney “has directed the ministry to examine this issue and explore what changes are necessary to begin tracking statistics around dooring.”

“Safety is our top priority,” Anderson said.

Toronto Police spokesperson Connie Osborne said while the provincial government is responsible for defining collisions, the force does investigate dooring incidents and writes general occurrence reports about them.

Osborne said “cyclist safety is a priority” for the force, particularly under the city’s Vision Zero road safety plan, “and we are reviewing and clarifying reporting procedures for traffic collisions involving motor vehicles and cyclists.”

“We are committed to public safety and will continue to work hard to protect those using our roadways,” she added.

According to police statistics, there were 185 dooring incidents in Toronto in 2017, and 132 in 2018. So far this year there have been 129.

Although not considered traffic collisions, dooring is a provincial offence under the Highway Traffic Act. A person convicted of opening a vehicle door “without first taking due precautions” faces a $365 fine and three demerit points.

Pete Karageorgos, Ontario director of consumer and industry relations for the Insurance Bureau of Canada, confirmed that for insurance purposes, dooring incidents are traffic collisions.

He said cyclists who are doored are entitled to claim accident benefits from the driver’s insurer if they aren’t covered by a policy of their own.

“It’s still an accident or collision with the vehicle, and it would be covered under the auto insurance policy,” Karageorgos said.

Keagan Gartz, interim executive director of advocacy group Cycle Toronto, said the province’s approach is clearly flawed.

“Anyone who has been on the receiving end of being hit by a car door on their bicycle will tell you that they’ve been in a collision,” she said.

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She called on the province to enact a law similar to one proposed by the opposition Ontario NDP in November, which would include doorings in the definition of motor vehicle collisions.

David Shellnut, a lawyer who specializes in cycling incidents, said the way doorings are dealt with can cause victims harm.

“By not providing relevant insurance information victims do not get access to accident benefits. Delays to their treatment and recovery can make their injuries worse,” Shellnut wrote in an open letter to Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders earlier this month.

Hayes’ sister Meredith is helping him pursue his claim. The pair say that when they contacted police in the days after his collision they were told to pay $67 to request the file on the incident.

The only documentation they received was a general occurrence report, which didn’t include the driver’s information.

In the report, police noted “there was no one available to attend the call” when the crash happened and so no officers attended the scene. However, the driver went to 14 Division the next day and reported the incident.

According to Meredith, the Toronto police legal services department told her she and her brother would have to apply for a court order to compel the force to hand over the driver’s information. That would likely require paying for a lawyer.

“It just is way too much effort for something that should be so simple. Information should just be available to a victim of an accident, it shouldn’t be this hard,” Meredith said.

As they decide on their next steps, the family says they are out the roughly $2,800 it cost to fix Dan’s high-end bicycle.

Dan says he also incurred significant transportation costs in the period after the accident when he was unable to ride his bike and had to take cabs.

For weeks after the crash he was unable to take shifts as a courier, and months later he said he can only ride for about 45 minutes at a time thanks to an inflamed rotator cuff caused by the collision.

He said he’s been forced to incur “a bunch of credit card debt.”

Dan said he paid about $250 for two sessions with an osteopath, but he’s been otherwise reluctant to pay out of pocket for physiotherapy because he doesn’t know if he’ll eventually be reimbursed through an insurance claim.

“It would just have been nice if I at least had access to some basic insurance benefits for the cost of my bike and some physio, and the percentage of some lost wages, which is kind of standard,” he said.

“I’m just trying to get back to where I was.”