A city in the United States is promoting cycle safety to children through a series of short graphic novels – and ‘graphic’ is the right word, given the content.
Commissioned by Phoenix, Arizona’s Street Transportation Department, the artwork leaves little to the imagination, with the six titles each focusing on one potential hazard for children on bikes.
Those topics include advice to wear a helmet, not ride in the blind spots of large vehicles or jump red lights, and to avoid the ‘door zone.’
Each graphic novel – you can find them all here – also includes tips on how to do safety checks on a bike and for safe riding.
Given out at cycle safety events at schools and elsewhere, they’re the work of illustrator Rob Osborne, who told AZ Central that his aim was to shock to reinforce the points being made – including, in one strip, a youngster who ignore a ‘Stop’ sign getting killed.
He says he has little in the way of negative feedback.
But Nichole Schaffer, mother of a nine-year-old girl who was given one of the novels at a cycle safety event at her school, said: “I thought, ‘This can’t be real’.” She said the content had “freaked out” her daughter,” and added that “It looks like something out of a horror movie.”
Monica Hernandez, spokeswoman for the Street Transportation Department, said: “There’s nothing comical about this. This is serious.”
The city is now working on a new campaign aimed at children from kindergarten age, and again Osborne will provide the illustration, although he said, “I suspect we won’t be as over the top.”
According to local news reports, two cyclists have lost their lives in Phoenix within the past month, both victims of hit-and-run drivers.
19 thoughts on “US city uses graphic novels to teach kids cycle safety”
Restrained headline from road
Restrained headline from road.cc !
Contrast:
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/04/21/insane-comic-books-warn-phoenix-children-that-biking-will-kill-them/
‘Episode 5’ should link to
https://www.phoenix.gov/streetssite/Documents/093206.pdf
Dangerising.
Those comic-book images are
Those comic-book images are awful. Spending money teaching kids how to ride will always be more effective than any amount of ‘safety’ scaremongering.
IAnd nothing to give to drivers about trying to avoid killing vulnerable road users?
Simon E wrote:
Maybe giving kids graphic booklets about the door zone is their sneaky way of getting drivers (parents) to read it.
Or maybe they are just crazy.
May I introduce America’s
May I introduce America’s best selling automobile, the Ford F150.
It’s all about safety.
bikebot wrote:
Why do they need “Forward Collision Warning”? Isn’t that the bit you can definitely see out of the front of the car? (are we allowed to call something like this a car at all?)
brooksby wrote:
Well they’re now allowed to call it a car, that’s the trick. The light duty truck is its own special category, which escapes the higher regulatory standards of a car. They’re utility vehicles, which have lower environmental and safety standards because the law regards them as essential for certain commercial use.
Ecept they’re almost all now used exclusively for personal transport. LIke a car, which they now outsell in America.
“Don’t get doored”
“Don’t get doored”
Okay. Because dooring is only ever the fault of the cyclist. It’s not up to drivers to look before opening their doors or pay attention to the road. Oh no. If you get doored it’s your own fault.
It would have been nice if
It would have been nice if they were given a graphic novel showing a race of evil motorised maniacs that kept trying to ‘door’ children on bikes and chased them over the ASLs. Then they could have shared that with their parents and got the same message across without victim blaming. Driver education is going to achieve more than getting cyclists to wear helmets.
I’ve got to say they are
I’ve got to say they are pretty explicit (exposed brain in episode 1, legs bent the wrong way in episode 4), but nothing you wouldn’t see on kid’s TV. However, the weirdest thing: in episode 4 “Avoid the blind spot! Ride where you can be seen!”, the characters are playing soccer. In the US.
Mixed feelings on the graphic
Mixed feelings on the graphic comics. Parents will see them too and sometimes shock tactics work better than what could be seen as dull education pamphlets. I get that here in the UK something like that would probably never get sanctioned, alas, livin’ in America….
Road safety is *everyone’s* responsibly and I often see comments directed at vehicle drivers questioning why there’s no education aimed at motorists in similar fashion when cyclists are targeted. It’s a valid point but that is the current culture we live in.
Until attitudes change, as a vulnerable road user you absolutely must take your own safety as literally a matter of life and death. To encourage it can only be a good thing. I know it often feels like cyclists are an easy target but a cyclist is not cocooned in a steel box and surrounded by air bags so you alway have to think safety to a point where the motorists around you don’t care about you and where many motorist’s only see you as an inconvenience.
It doesn’t always mean cyclists are an easy target, or a blamed for their own injuries/fatalities when safety is directed solely at them. You only have to search YouTube to find grown men and women trying to scoot down the side of a creeping 40 ton truck in a busy city centre and watch as the gap the cyclist has gets narrower and narrower. It’s alarming and shows a lot of cyclists who are ordinarily intelligent and sensible people just don’t get cycle safety.
Case in point; https://youtu.be/WxgUr75eCa4
As for the graphic comics, if they work then they’ve done their job, despite being borderline inappropriate.
Critchio wrote:
Victim blaming is still victim blaming no matter how you dress it up. It may be alarming to see an adult trying to pass a 40 ton truck on a bike, but what’s more alarming to me is that a 40 ton truck with incredibly bad visibility and big blind spots is allowed on public roads with hardly a second thought about safety.
Again, driver education will produce far better results than getting kids to wear a helmet.
hawkinspeter wrote:
..as will rider education.
fukawitribe wrote:
..as will rider education.— hawkinspeter
I’d like to refer you to Bez’s excellent blog post about idiots: http://beyondthekerb.org.uk/2016/03/14/the-rise-of-the-idiots/
Yes, educating cyclists is a good idea, but a much better idea is educating drivers. Most idiots on bikes learn sooner or later about what behaviour is dangerous or not (except when they have a fatal lesson), but idiots in vehicles are insulated from that essential feedback loop.
Additionally, the statistics are that the vast majority of road incidents are caused by driver inattention, so it makes sense to address the root cause of the problem rather than just one arbitrary set of victims. (You may as well educate all pedestrians about the danger of not using helmets while we’re about it for all the good that will do).
Critchio wrote:
Safety is largely the responsibility of those responsible for creating the danger. Both morally and as a matter of pragmatic reality – they are the people who actually have the power to affect safety. All this stuff does is scare people with references to dangers that most will soon realise they don’t have much power to avoid.
And the obvious effect of this sort of shock-tactic aimed at those who have very little control over the situation, is that people will decide cycling is too dangerous and will give it up. Job done, I guess, as I suspect that is the real aim of this sort of thing.
I work in libraries and a
I work in libraries and a large number of parents and teachers always take a dim view of graphic novels, be it The Walking Dead, Batman or cycling safety.
The problem is that unlike a regular book or even the internet (where the graphic content is mainly accessed in private), graphic novels are more immediate and in your face. People don’t like to be reminded of the realities of the modern world and would rather ignore it.
See this article for a very
See this article for a very interesting comment on the effect of this kind of campaign:
http://singletrackworld.com/columns/2015/10/we-do-not-negotiate-with-terrorists/
Contrast this with a more rational response:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01lw88k
This campaign looks great to
This campaign looks great to me? I’m guessing it’s a good pitch for kids. If the graphics are too much for a child to process, should they be riding on a public road in the first place?
This campaign looks great to
This campaign looks great to me? I’m guessing it’s a good pitch for kids. If the graphics are too much for an adult
a childto process, should they beridingdriving on a public road in the first place?Looks good to me – as said somewhere above some adults can’t cope with graphic style communication but then they aren’t the target audience
Agree that can be seen as victim blaming but the world isn’t going to change overnight and I’d rather have kids aware of blind spots and the potential for dooring than wait for truck and road designs to change and drivers attitudes to other road users to make a quantum leap change
Problem is when this type of education is seen as the fix rather than a stopgap
it also tends to encourage the belief commonly held that cyclists have road “accidents” as a result of bad road behaviour by cyclists which is far from true
It’s good they are teaching
It’s good they are teaching potential cyclists to ride defensively. It is bad they are teaching future drivers that an accident is always the cyclists fault.