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).