You Can Make Money and Help Your Community During Bike Safety Month
Don't let this opportunity to promote your business pass you by! The bicycle business has boomed over the last several years, and this is the one area you will be able to promote your business and feel good about the safety you are helping to spread to everyone around you.
The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has provided a
wonderful list of ideas you can use to promote National Bike Safety
Month.
- Organize a bike helmet discount or giveaway for younger kids, youth and parents. Make sure to teach proper fit and use.
- Hold a helmet-use challenge at school, between schools, or between competing groups in the community.
- Work with law enforcement agencies to encourage enforcement of bicycle traffic laws.
- Conduct helmet-use observation studies and report your findings.
- Organize
a bike ride for your school or community. Include a discussion and
safety education materials on rules for safe riding before the ride.
- Encourage local bike retailers to promote helmet use for everyone.
- Recruit
bicycle crash survivors or motorists involved in a bicycle crash to
speak at school assemblies, community or faith-based events, etc.
- Organize
a bike path clean-up day. Use this opportunity to reinforce safe riding
and safe driving around bicyclists using existing resources.
- Work with local pediatricians, family practice centers or clinics to counsel families to use bicycle helmets every ride.
- Sponsor
bicycle day, week, or month to get your community out riding bicycles
for fun or to encourage replacing short car trips with a bike trip. The
more bicyclists seen on a routine basis, the more motorists will expect
to look for, and see bicycle riders. Replacing short trips by bike can
impact traffic congestion and have an environmental impact. Encourage
everyone to be a role model for safe behaviors as bicyclists and as
motorists around bicyclists. Promote helmet use, shared courtesy and the
rules of the road for bicyclists and drivers.
- Sponsor
or organize community training for identified groups on how to properly
fit a bicycle helmet, i.e. employees of bicycle shops or where bicycles
are sold, students and adults in after school programs or summer camps,
youth and leaders of clubs like boy scouts, 4H, school bike clubs, etc.
- Develop
a “Share the Road” campaign to educate the community on what it means
and what behavior is expected between bicyclists and motorists.
- Start
a community bicycle recycling program. Teach youth to repair or rebuild
donated bicycles. Work with local law enforcement to rebuild stolen
bicycles and donate them to families or youth in need.
- Create
a bicycle club for children, youth, adults, and/or families in the
community, schools, after school programs or faith based settings.
- Conduct
a helmet use and bicycle attitudinal study. Ask community members of
all ages what they think about bicycling conditions, helmet use, and
other bicycle safety-related issues. Use the information you collect to
build your bicycle safety program.
- Work with youth and adult sports league team members to promote bicycle helmet use.
- Sponsor a bike safety night at a community baseball or soccer game.
- Seek opportunities to reach adults on adopting safe behaviors when riding.
- Seek opportunities to reach adults on driving safely around those bicycling.
- Initiate
a school or community helmet incentive program for kids or youth
providing rewards for wearing helmets. Think of how this should be
varied based on programs for elementary or middle-high school ages.
Don’t forget the behaviors of children need to be reinforced by what
they see parents and adults doing.
- Design a poster featuring local athletes promoting bike helmets.
- Sponsor a bicycle safety essay contest for varying ages. Publish winners in newsletters or local papers.
- Solicit free billboard space and post bicycle safety messages.
- Encourage
health and/or car insurance companies and local medical facilities to
offer bicycle helmets to clients at no or low cost along with bicycle
safety information for bicyclists and motorists.
- Sponsor
a community bike-a-thon; use proceeds to provide bike helmets to riders
who can’t afford
them.
- Hold
a bicycle safety checkpoint at bike paths, recreation areas, or
schools. Checkpoints can be used to pull over bicyclists whose helmets
are being worn incorrectly and correct the fit, to offer education on
the importance of helmet use and the safety rules of the road, or to
entice community awareness, involvement and respect for sharing the road
with motorists and bicyclists.
- Pass
a bicycle helmet use policy in the school system, local government, and
businesses.
- Assess your community needs for bicycle safety Complete a Bikeability Checklist, see:www.bicyclinginfo.org/pdf/bikeability_checklist.pdf
- Sponsor a bicycle safety poster contest.
- Produce
a bicycle safety video or public service announcement through a local
TV or radio station. Reach out to bicyclists, motorists or both to help
keep the roadway safe for all road users, including bicyclists.
- Conduct a bicycle education program or Cycling Skills Clinic, see:www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Bicycles/CyclingSkillsClinic
- Develop
a bicycle safety project with youth groups (e.g. Scout badges, 4-H
programs, etc.)
- Work
with local retailers to include bicycle safety messages in their stores
and as part of their advertisements.
- Place
bicycle safety displays in health clinics, doctors’ offices, hospitals,
banks, cafeterias, shopping malls, bus stops, libraries and other
gathering places in the
community.
- Provide bicycle safety lesson ideas or activities for educators to utilize.
- Sponsor bicycle maintenance clinics for all riders.
- Work with fast food restaurants to place bicycle safety messages on tray liners.
- Provide
or sponsor bicycle safety training for those who work with youth and
who could reinforce bicycle safety principles, e.g., youth group
leaders, recreation department staff, and law enforcement officers, etc.
- Hold
a media event simulating an actual bike crash or near miss to emphasize
the importance of how to behave safely as a bicyclist and a motorist
around bicyclists.
- Work
with helmet distributors or local retailers to offer helmet discounts
or coupons for discounts on helmets for your school or community.
- Distribute
bicycle safety tips through PTA’s, PTO’s, childcare centers, after-
school programs, parent organizations, civic organization or in your
local papers.
- Be
a sponsor for a bicycle helmet giveaway program. Provide financial
support for bicycle safety equipment giveaways including helmets,
retro-reflective gear, or bicycle
lights.
- Educate
adults about the importance of being good role models; encourage them
to set the example for safe behavior as a bicyclist and as a motorist.
At BikeNSafety Promos, our goal is to provide safety to every bicycle rider out there. Which is why we have developed the BugEyez blinking lights
- the perfect giveaway for any event. Imagine your company name
imprinted on our LED Safety Light, being passed out at an event whose
main goal is not only to promote safety education, but in a fun way!
