Suicide door

A suicide door is an automobile door hinged at its rear rather than the front.^[1] Such doors were originally used on horse-drawn carriages^[2] but are rarely found on modern vehicles, primarily because they are less safe than front-hinged doors.

If the vehicle were moving and the rear-hinged door opened, aerodynamic drag would force the door open, and the person would have to lean out of the vehicle to reach the handle to close it. As seat belts were not commonly used at that time, the person could easily fall out of the car and into traffic, hence the name "suicide door".^[3][4] Another risk was from a car speeding past the parked car in the same direction. A front-hinged door would tend to be ripped off the parked car, but someone partly outside it might escape injury if they were not directly in the path of the speeding car. In contrast, a rear-hinged door would be forced shut, striking the person.

Initially standard on many models, later they became popularized in the custom car trade.^[5] Automobile manufacturers call the doors coach doors (Rolls-Royce),^[4] flexdoors (Vauxhall),^[6] freestyle doors (Mazda),^[4] rear access doors (Saturn),^[4] clamshell doors (BMW), or simply back-hinged doors.^[1]