Dear Think Tank;
Do you use a video to teach bike traffic safety? Which one? Who do you teach with it? Is it part of a course that includes actual riding, or is the video all they get?
Here's why we want to know: Everyone who gets a bike from OCBC is offered a free Traffic Skills Intro class , but less than 5% of them take it. (It's three hours split evenly between a slideshow/discussion, rodeo drills, and a group ride in city traffic -- the shortest we could make the LAB's 9-hour curriculum)
Earn A Bike youth must take this class as part of earning their bike. Most of our other students pay a $25 fee since they didn't buy a bike from us. We get frustrated cancelling classes on these folks when we have less than three students (but a class of two is less educational, not efficient, and just kind of weird).
For a long time we asked bike purchasers to take an online quiz on safe cycling (with answer feedback) while we final-checked their bikes. Almost everyone took it, and most said they appreciated the info. But it had no video, so did not demonstrate good technique, or, obviously, give them any guided practice on their bikes.
So we want to give better information with a video on the basics of riding in traffic they can watch in the shop (or anytime online) and bring more of them back in with a shorter class that still covers the same "need to knows" -- since they will have seen good practice modeled in a standardized, visual way. (I'm picturing a video version of How to Not Get Hit By Cars).
*We'd **also **like to use this video as the first station in community bike rodeos.*
Is this a tall order? If you haven't found a video you can stand either, what do you do to teach good bicycle traffic skills? Is it effective?
Please leave your answers in this google form https://goo.gl/forms/P1MVez5bvoFKRmX32, and for an ironic reward, see this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prhQixo0sFI (if you can stand it) for all the production and pedagogical choices we want to avoid at all costs.
Thanks,
Jim Sheehan Executive Director Ohio City Bicycle Co-op 1840 Columbus Rd Cleveland, Ohio 44113 216 830 2667 OhioCityCycles.org jim@ohiocitycycles.org