National bike org launches ‘Travel With Care’ safety campaign

I like it, but would have shifted a bit to be less about personas and more about functional trips. For example, on the little girl one, I’d have the copy be “Student, Sister, Rides to Soccer Practice”.

My reasoning being that I get much more flak from drivers when out on a weekend joy ride than I do when obviously commuting at 8am with panniers. Not that I don’t have the right for a joy ride or anything, but functional trips sure are tough to argue with!

Chef. Neighbor. Will stab the crap out of you if you cut it close.

Why should these ads NOT be aimed at drivers–the behavior of drivers is the vastly larger problem?

The ads appear to be directed at the person in the photo, not the person driving a car. It seems to be telling the person riding a bike to “travel with care”. Very similar to effect of the “share the road” signs. People see the message directed at the person on the ad/sign and not them.

I love the campaign and hope to see it displayed regularly. Seems like this message can be one small piece in the giant puzzle of changing motorists attitudes towards cyclists.

I often speak with motorists who cannot relate to cyclists as people they can identify with or have compassion for or even work cooperatively with.

I did notice the posters show some tough people. Showing more people that truly look more like a person who happens to ride to bike might be good.

Cool to see Eric Larsen in the mix – that’s the Surly Moonlander he tried to ride across Antarctica to the South Pole.

people in the ad: student, race car driver, personal trainer, pro athlete, chef, firefighter, polar explorer

people in the ad that the general public encounters in their daily routines: none

none of those people in the ad speak to me… I never have personal social interactions with any of those types of people… perhaps I do have interactions with them in their normal clothing, but you really don’t see people biking in race car or firefighting gear…

I’m thinking drivers will get a good laugh as they fail to connect those out of place people with the bikes, then as Adam H says, they’ll think “yeah, those cyclists need to travel with care”…

I support this campaign, but some of those puns are absolutely terrible.

IMO these are well thought out and I don’t get the impression that readers will mistakenly believe they’re only telling cyclists to bike with care. I like that they seem to level the message and not focus it or direct blame, and I also think SilkySlim has a good point (though word count is tricky when the target audience is moving by). I also like that they changed their name away from “Bikes Belong” which came off a little whiny to me.

The selection seems good – it kind of catches you off guard to see a race car driver and not some “Lance wannabe in spandex.” I think their next one should be a police officer on bike patrol…

“…I’m glad they changed the slogan from “Drive” to “Travel” because I think people respond poorly when bike-related campaigns look like they’re targeted only at drivers. …” maus/bikeportland

Traveling safe, should be the primary objective of everyone using the road. I think not using the word ‘drive’ and instead using ‘travel’ as a key part of the campaigns’, or slogan’s name, does make for a better, more worthy emphasis.

Curious, what is their outreach / distribution plan? Or how do communities get their hands on them if they want them? I work in rural communities a lot and I don’t think they always know that tools like this are available for them. I also think it’d be great if they included more less-extreme looking folks, like the little girl is good, but the chef, race car driver and polar dude all look pretty hard core. What about moms, farmers, people who work in offices, the average Joe, etc.?

I like that only two out of five of the models are shown with helmets, and no one is actually pictured wearing a helmet. It humanizes people on bikes and legitimizes both choices.

I think if car drivers can see bike riders they will be less likely to hit them. Be visible or else.

Quote from above: “Finally, a safety campaign that puts responsibility on the car driver!” This attitude is what gets cyclists killed.

What about the cyclist, do they not have some responsibility to make themselves visible to car drivers?

If you are wearing highly visible clothing and have flashing lights a car driver is going to have a hard time telling the policeman that he didn’t see you.

I’m not going to have anyone do anything. Do exactly what you want – I’m just telling you that if you are out in the street (riding or walking) and car drivers can’t see you, you may be hit. Is that a difficult concept for you?