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September 3, 2003

Public Safety Campaign For Poor and Working Adults on Bikes

I'm still working on a good title for this idea, and it's is kind of site-specific, but I really want someone to launch a bicycle visibility/safety campaign in my neighborhood focusing on the working people, poor people, and drunks out biking out after dark.

I could see two campaigns (which may or may not overlap): Poor and working people, and DUI recipients.

My assumption is (and I know it's a little prejudiced, but it's based partly on family experience) is that a fair number of the guys I see in my neighborhood out late at night on bikes have lost their licenses due to DUIs. Some are ne'er do-wells, as I discovered on Lombard one night myself (bike-by-groping). But some are probably on their way home from work, and regardless, just because someone's up to no good doesn't mean I want to run them over.

The other reason why people might be on bikes around here is because they can't afford a car or insurance. I rarely see bike helmets on adults in my neighborhood, and when I do, I assume they are yuppie/hipster newcomers. I do see a lot of people (men and women) collecting bottles and cans by bike. Poverty, like alcoholism, is not a pleasant thing to acknowledge in a public safety campaign because you're not actually addressing the root of the problem, but you can't solve all the problems all the time. Homeless people and drunks generally aren't as cute as little kids, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to make their biking lives safer.

There is a big emphasis on bikes here in Portland right now. Bike lanes are going in all over the place as a result of Portland's urban planning priorities -- and that's totally cool. But where I live, bike lanes are seen as a "City of Portland" driven thing, coming from politically active yuppies or anarchists in SE Portland. I was at my neighborhood association meeting the other night, and it was really interesting (and depressing) for me to see how bike lanes (and curb extensions, and other things aimed at making busy streets friendly to things other than cars) are seen as an outside agenda, not something that benefits those of us who live here or are from here.

I think outreach -- specific, concrete outreach -- should be done on behalf of bicycle activists recognizing that bike safety is not something just for kids, radicals, and hipsters, and that bike advocates care about all biker, even poor ones.

So here are some ideas:

• Coors or Bud or whoever could give away reflective stickers and vests with their corporate logos at bars.
  
• You could go into bars with a poster with two pictures, each showing a bike at night, one with reflective tape, one without, to demonstrate how invisible bikes are without help.
  
• Carharts could make bike helmets in their distinctive khaki.
  
• Mothers Against Drunk Drivers gives away reflective bike stickers that say something like "I'm Biking So That Others May Live!"
  

All my ideas so far seem to have the drinky tie-in, but jokes aside, practically speaking, our eighborhood really does need bicycle safety work focusing on adults.

I think that ideally, our local bike shop, Weir's Cyclery would spearhead the effort, and get support from the "socially progressive" biking community here in Portland. There's a pretty politically active biking community here in Portland, for instance, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, and a bunch of biking anarchist types who need to do outreach.

Even if someone stood on a street corner handing out reflective tape and lights to guys they saw who were otherwise almost invisible, it would help a lot.

Anyway, that's my idea. If I had more balls I might actually get off the couch and pitch it to the local bike activists, or even just buy a roll of reflectee tape and hand it out myself. I'll keep you posted, but at this point, I kinda doubt I'll get around to it. I actually started this entry like a week ago and then got all riled up about how I should email Weir's Cyclery and tell him to do it but that just made me procrastinate on the blogging.

Posted by mary at September 3, 2003 7:08 PM

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Posted by: Anonymous at December 7, 2005 9:34 PM

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