By Keith Vogelsang
BBC members who attended this year’s winter banquet may recall the safety presentation given by Raymond Hess, who works in the city’s Planning Department. During that presentation, Raymond discussed his Guerrilla Bike Light Campaign, where police and city personnel would set up at dusk in an unannounced location and wait for scofflaws on bikes to appear from the shadows.
Once caught in the act of riding without proper lighting, these unsuspecting bicyclists would be given not a citation, but a new set of lights. Thanks to a program funded by the BBC, these scofflaws are now more visible on the road.
Raymond tells us the first year of the campaign, the supply of lights moved very quickly once word got out that the lights were being given away. For this year’s campaign, I received highly classified intelligence of when and where the guerrilla give-away was going down, and made sure that I was there to witness this innovative safety campaign for myself.
I took pictures, I installed several lights, and offered maintenance, route, and safety suggestions to all who would listen. One guy even invited me to take a ride on his slingshot fixed-gear–what an engineering marvel this bike was!
Michael Malik, a reporter for the Herald-Times, wrote up a story for this year’s campaign, viewable at http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2010/06/10/news.qp-6884236.sto (subscription required). BBC grants are supporting numerous innovative bicycle use and safety initiatives, and it was a lot of fun to participate in this one implemented by folks from the Planning Department.