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Bicycle Safety

Portland Water Bureau Launches Bike/Truck Safety Campaign

4:02 PM EDT on October 16, 2008

Check out this video, via BikePortland.org, on bicycle safety, part of a Portland Water Bureau campaign to reduce truck-cyclist collisions there. Last month, the Water Bureau held a bike safety seminar, which involved cyclists climbing into the cab of a city truck to see (or not see) driver blind spots for themselves.

The accompanying vid definitely puts the onus on cyclists (since "drivers are trained for safety"). Still, there's valuable info here on how the road looks from a truck driver's perspective, and it's impressive to see a city not only acknowledging the dangers trucks pose to cyclists, but taking action to mitigate them. Writes BikePortland.org editor Jonathan Maus:

I’m usually skeptical of educational videos as they are often cheesyand pedantic. But this one worked. Much of the footage was taken frominside the truck’s cab on crowded bikeways I’m very familiar with, butthey looked completely different from a trucker’s perspective. It waseye-opening and nerve-racking just to watch the truck’s rear and sidemirrors as bikes darted in and out of view — I couldn’t imagine thestress of actually operating that vehicle.

Brad Aaron
Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York'’s dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.

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