City to unveil new roadway safety campaign
Posted By Thomas Bahde on August 27, 2009
The City of San Diego and SANDAG will unveil a new roadway safety campaign next month called “Lose the Roaditude” which aims to reduce the number of confrontations and accidents between automobile drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians. The campaign is designed to increase awareness of basic traffic rules, promote courtesy, and reduce aggressive behavior by all users of public roadways.
From the webpage:
Through the Lose the Roaditude Campaign, we strive to foster respect among cyclists, motorists and pedestrians and encourage them to share the road safely by reducing aggressive attitudes while biking, driving and walking. Ultimately, the campaign goal is to modify the behaviors of these three groups in order to decrease the number of crashes, injuries and fatalities (emphasis added).
While the safety angle and the call to follow the rules of the road are much appreciated, one wonders whether bicyclists and pedestrians are really the source of much roadway aggression. Does yelling at a driver who nearly runs down a pedestrian or bicyclist constitute aggressive behavior? Suggesting that drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians all have an obligation to be courteous and observe traffic safety is fine (we’re big proponents of bicyclists behaving courteously), but as long as automobiles constitute the majority of the traffic (and cause the majority of accidents), they should be the primary targets of any campaign to reduce aggressive and unlawful behavior.
Bike San Diego will be following this new campaign as it develops, hopefully in a positive direction.
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2 Responses to “City to unveil new roadway safety campaign”
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Interesting signs they have created for the (hopefully first) set of safety reminders. I guess they represent what they feel are the most common or most important violations. I like the message “Bikes always go with the flow,” but they seem to be only targeting an audience of bicyclists that ride against the flow of traffic. I would like to see the message generalized to also target motorists that may need a reminder that bikes are allowed in the traffic lanes. Hopefully the campaign will expand to additional safety reminders.
I agree with your take on it. I’m all for general civility, but that shouldn’t be SANDAG’s project. They need to stop drivers from killing each other and the rest of us. Literally.
How about
“MOTORISTS: DON’T KILL OR MAIM CYCLISTS AND PEDESTRIANS.”
Direct enough?