Uniquely:
To exit, DRP wants drivers to use their “wrong” [i.e. far] hand (FH).
Globally, prior to DRP, very few bike advocates & road safety experts knew or taught the FHH.
DRP laid the basis for professional evaluation & acceptance of this little-known practice. It researched FHH’s provenance, its history of use in NL, its relationship to Dutch traffic code & licensing tests, its role in Dutch driver education and its limited spread elsewhere.
DRP produced the first formal safety comparison of NH versus FH methods, which clarified FHH’s superiority & identified the NHH’s flaws.
As the Dutch merely called it “how you open a car door,” DRP coined Dutch Reach so the nameless FHH could be specifically talked about, cited & marketed as a social good.
DRP is an entirely volunteer grassroots web-based NGO. Yet it has made the DR a widely recognized best practice, taught & promoted by road safety & bike organizations, governments, driving instructors, companies & citizens world-wide.

Implementation
Replication is largely proceeding on its own, especially in English & German speaking countries. DRP now also recasts its social media posts into other languages (using online translation apps & remote volunteer help) to seed awareness & advocacy elsewhere.

Evaluation
DRP deems itself a success. Yet while DRP stimulates & assists DR implementation efforts, local advocates & authorities must still “do the heavy lifting” in their own city, state or nation to ultimately alter motorist conduct.

Current project issues: DRP's website needs to be improved & paid staffing considered.

Lesson Diffusion
DRP’s strategy & tactics can be applied to other neglected VRU safety issues - such as truck blind spots, right & left hooks & overtaking incidents - by promoting VRU-specific signage. DRP has called for a “Sign Bike Safety” (SBS) project to crowdsource & disseminate needed & better bike/VRU safety signage. [See website: Advocacy Toolkit > Cycling-Org’s > SBS.]

Bicyclists contributed art, design, advocacy & research while experts in NL & Harvard University provided knowledge & mentoring [re: FHH in NL] for DRP’s launch and progress.

Massachusetts DOT worked with DRP to add DR to the state's driver’s manual, a first in North America.

DRP works with bicycle & road safety groups to promote the DR, most notably with League of American Bicyclists; Cycling UK; & the Automobile Assn. of America [which added DR to “How To Drive”, 15th Ed. (2020)].

DRP helps governments, companies & road safety organizations add DR to driver manuals, driver training programs & road sharing safety campaigns.

The DR prevents harm, costs & burdens to victims, perpetrators, families, friends, colleagues, companies, police, rescue & care-providers, other road users, courts, insurers, tax-payers & governments.

Safer road sharing encourages bicycling & other active, healthy, environment-friendly personal transport & also reduces traffic jams & congestion.

DRP has:
Energized anti-dooring advocacy, focused on motorist responsibility & popularized a simple free fix.
Led driving & road safety experts to consider hand choice impacts on motorist egress & VRU safety.
Led to DR’s inclusion in state driver’s manuals, state & municipal advisories, novice & defensive driving textbooks, courses, road codes, etc.
Led governments & NGOs to conduct DR anti-dooring road safety campaigns.
Led bike & road safety organizations to promote the DR & advocate for government adoption.
Led transport sector companies for delivery & passenger service, driving educators, automakers, insurers & personal injury lawyers to add the DR to driver & client trainings & advisories.
Prompted media attention in 40 countries & 30 languages, & production of hundreds of graphics, audios, videos & animations, blog posts & established print & digital articles.
To the extent now used, reduced dooring risk, crashes, suffering & costs for VRUs & society.

DRP needed to confirm the FHH’s Dutch provenance, authority & safety advantages versus the NHH.

Evidence, arguments & marketing were needed to overcome FHH’s obscurity & oddness, public apathy, skepticism & possible animosity towards bicyclists when asking drivers to swap out their life-long “common sense” NHH.

DRP’s mentor & a Dutch colleague attested to FHH’s Dutch provenance & respected authority. But neither the NH nor FH methods were ever subjected to modern human factors research. Hence DRP conducted its own examination and compared each against eleven safety criteria.

The results showed how the NHH fails, allows & even enables doorings: NHH permits door flinging, inhibits a full blind-spot shoulder-check, & over relies on side-mirror use.

Thus by provenance, safety & method, naming it the "DR" was accurate - & very useful for marketing because DR is descriptive, memorable & quick-off-the-tongue; & its odd name provoked near viral interest by the wired generation.

Success likely due to:
A serious road safety danger demanded prevention.
An effective but widely overlooked solution is recognized.
An at-risk digitally-connected cohort with its own groups, advocates & media voices. [Urban bicyclists]
Global issues broadening concern. [transport & environment crises]
Available home digital technologies for communication, research & marketing.
A skilled, motivated activist.
Standard & improvised strategies, tactics & ability to proof, document & communicate the solution & action requests to target audiences & decision makers. [VRUs, road safety, officials, media & public.]
Local & remote independent grassroots participants & collaborators linked by DRP staff & website.
~$1000 out of pocket over 3.5 years for equipment, web & print services, etc..
Predictable but randomly occurring news, posts & developments on topic were collected & served back via the web, fostering a virtuous cycle of interest, feedback, media coverage & replication.

The DR is now replicated &/or institutionalized well beyond Massachusetts, which added DR to its driver’s manual in 2017. Illinois, Washington, Pennsylvania, South Australia & NZ have now also done so. New York City & Albany, NYS; Burbank & San Francisco, CA; London; Telangana & Indore, India; Guardia Civil, ES; Montréal Quebec & Ontario, Ca; Dublin, IE; Stadt Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg & Stuttgart DE all now promote the DR via social media campaigns. UK’s Dept. for Transport is to add the DR to the UK Highway Code in 2020 after a DR campaign by Cycling UK with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents' support. NGOs L'association Prévention Routière, FR; National Safety Council & American Automobile Association, US; Deutscher Verkehrssicherheitsrat, DE; Brake UK; Liikenneturva, FI. & Irish Road Safety Authority - also now endorse & promote DR/FHH.
DRP’s process may be used for other road sharing safety issues, for better VRU signage & behavior change campaigns.

General Lessons:
The ‘Power of One’: A motivated individual with a good idea can make a difference, a rather large one at that.

But to do so, much work & the help of many other concerned & committed people, organizations, business & civic entities are required to achieve a social good such as a mass behavior change.

Persistence (as well as some creativity & occasional ingenuity) is necessary to overcome hurdles.

A discrete yet widespread social good can be promulgated, & gains rapidly achieved, by soft linkage of independent volunteers & informally partnered organizations coordinated by a single agent using common low cost technologies.

Free agent activism - independent, non-credentialed, volunteered, self-financed, internally & idealistically motivated - allows great flexibility of action.

But such agents must generate legitimacy & authority for themselves & their mission by word, act & deed to earn hearing, respect & collaborations necessary to achieve the intended goal.

DR Lessons:
Habit change by road users requires awareness, motivation & repetitive practice. For many, advice alone is insufficient. As driving instructors ‘teach to the test,’ student drivers practice to the test. Hence, DR advice ought to be added to written exams & road tests for licensure. Police ticketing, larger fines, insurance penalty points & publicizing court cases & judgments will also motivate habit change.

DR functions both as a typical “dooring awareness” campaign and as a specific, habitual solution for both drivers & passengers. It makes a deeper impression as it assigns responsibility & correction where it largely belongs.

Skepticism about changing drivers’ conduct abounds. Skeptics cite NL as a special case. Yet in the 1970s NL had among the worst VRU & motorist fatality rates in Western Europe. [See NL's "Stop de Kindermoord" protest movement.] The FHH was part of their decades-long road safety revolution. The Dutch changed. So can we.

Personal note:
A young woman’s death by dooring provoked my campaign. I learned of the ‘reach’ that day. The success of DRP has astonished me almost as much as the FH revelation itself. For once launched, the DR just took off. DRP never issued a press release. I ‘launched’ DRP by encouraging local police to post Dutch Reach messages on mobile electronic traffic signs. One week later, a Boston Globe reporter saw the first such DR sign, called me & wrote up my project. Within two weeks a sports website which noticed that article posted a DR video now viewed 3.2 million times. Within one month I was interviewed by BBC/PRI The World (radio), which is broadcast to over 300 stations in North America. I rushed to make a website before the clip ran. On February 1, 2017 RoSPA (UK) adopted the DR. On May 30, 2017 Massachusetts DOT announced its inclusion in the state’s driver’s manual. I had set myself 2 years. Now 3 ½ years after Amanda’s death, DRP has met goals I had never thought to set.