Kansas City Bicycle Log

Posts, email, and ideas related to bicycling and bicycle advocacy.



I post these mostly for my own convenience in being able to keep them archived and searchable, but if you get some use of them, more power to you!

Among other interesting items here is a fairly complete record of my involvement with the grassroots effort in support of the BikeKC initiative in the Summer of 2002.

You can find everything from press releases to letters to the city council to exhortations to other bicyclists to write letters to the editor. See what worked well and what caused us problems in the effort to pass BikeKC.

From my point of view, this was almost a picture-perfect grass-roots movement. The result was that BikeKC was passed on August 15th, 2002.

Now we have to work to make sure the plan becomes reality!

Most of that is in the 8/25/2002-8/31/2002 archive.

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Sunday, October 20, 2002
Educating Officials About Safe Bicycling Practices
 
I think one reason it is difficult to convince certain people (including public officials) about safe bicycling practices is that several of them are counterintuitive to non-bicyclists. This would include things like:

* riding on the street is generally safer than sidewalk riding

* riding as far to the right as humanly possible is usually more dangerous than riding out in the lane closer to the motor traffic

* if the lane is very narrow it is usually safer and more comfortable to move towards the middle of the road (most non-bicyclists would assume that it's safer to move as far towards the edge as humanly possible)

* riding sidepaths is generally more dangerous than riding the streets they parallel etc.

One tack I tried to take in our Kansas City advocacy was to say that "Before I started bicycling seriously I used to believe XYZ just like you
did." I explained that I ccould see where they are coming from and that I, too, used to believe XYZ was the logical and reasonable position. Then I explain how I came to change my mind about the issue (the research I did, how at first I didn't believe it could be true, but then I tried it, and so on).

I thought this was pretty effective, but of course what is really effective in a particular case depends a lot of the particular circumstances and personalities involved.

--Brent

posted by Brent Hugh at Sunday, October 20, 2002 | permanently archived here

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