What To Do When Your Car Door Handle Breaks Unexpectedly

I haven’t had the greatest luck with my car recently. I’m nearing the point where I’m not convinced that I’ll have a passenger side of it soon. The real kicker is that it’s a 2024 model and I just got it in September 2025.

I’ve had the dang thing for 9 months and it’s already testing my patience.

In March, I was “doored,” where someone opened there door into traffic (a.k.a. me), which knocked off not only my passenger’s side-view mirror, but also the passenger-side door handle.

It took about a month or so to fix and I thought I was out of the woods with car issues.

I was wrong.

This week, despite the warm weather outside, I was feeling chilly in the office. Knowing that I had a “just in case” hoodie in my backseat, I ventured out to get it, thinking nothing of opening the rear passenger side door.

I reached for the handle which looked totally normal, and attempted to pull the door open. Instead of opening the door, the handle came clean off in my hand.

As someone who tends to accidentally overreact, I let out a scream. In my defense, this had never happened before and I was shocked.

I’m not a particularly strong person. I wasn’t pulling on it that hard at all. Yet, there the handle was, no longer attached to my car.

There are no scratches or dents that could indicate that this was an unnoticed result of when I got doored a few months ago, so I don’t really know what to make of this.

Luckily, it’s a door that’s rarely used, I barely have passengers in the front seat, let alone in the back, but I don’t want to leave it as is in case I do have a full car one day.

Ultimately, I’m debating MacGyvering it with duct tape out, but I don’t know if that’s a real long-term solution.

I just hope that I don’t have any animals hit it anytime soon causing even more damage, as I’ve had that happen more than my fair share of times.

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The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5's Kylie Moore. Any opinions expressed are Kylie's own. You can follow Kylie on Instagram.

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Source: The strangest thing just happened to my car