The Life-Sized City Blog

Classic traffic safety organisation narrative. "Stop cycling". By Stephanie Patterson With Mikael Colville-Andersen In the diverse world of traffic planning, advocacy and various movements for liveable cities, there is an odd group of outliers who broadcast conflicting messages. While “traffic safety” organisations seem like a natural part of the gallery and of the narrative, upon closer inspection they exist in a communication vacuum populated exclusively by like-minded organisations. There is little correlation with those organisations who advocate cycling, pedestrianism or safer streets. The traffic safety crowd are in a world unto themselves, with little or no accountability for the campaigns they develop or the messaging they broadcast. They are often allied with insurance companies who clearly take comfort in working with others who embrace scaring the population at large through constructed fear . In many ways, they are a classic subculture, with strong hints...

TEST I took part in a radio debate last week. Four guests and a journalist. In that forty-five minutes, I experienced a number of things including, but not limited to, the anti-intellectualisation of our society, emotional propaganda, alternative facts, manipulative and selective choice of facts, The Culture of Fear and the negative branding of cycling. You might expect I was on American or Australian radio. Nope. I was a 12 minute bike ride from Copenhagenize Design Company’s Copenhagen office - at Denmark’s national broadcaster, DR, on their flagship radio channel P1 Debat . The occasion was a debate about bike helmets. The week before, a Danish media personality, Mads Christensen , tossed out a remark on a television programme about how he let his kids decide for themselves, at the age of eight, if they wanted to wear a bike helmet or not. His comments were simply based on rationality about real or percieved dangers in society. Nevertheless, they generated a great deal of d...

We like data at Copenhagenize Design Company. It's a major part of our work, not least in our Desire Line Analyses of cyclist behaviour that we have done in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and planning to do on a global scale. We film an intersection for 10-12 hours and spending a couple hundred hours analysing the behaviour, doing counts of everything we can and producing solutions for modernising intersections to priortise cycling and pedestrians. In association with the current Desire Line Analysis we are working on, on Søtorvet intersection in Copenhagen, we have added some data sets. Including performing a bike helmet count. The reason is simple. There is no reliable data. The numbers we have seen are from the Danish Road Safety Council - Rådet for Sikker Trafik - and we are sceptical about them. They claim that the helmet wearing rate is 26%. Their random counts during rush hour and some telephone surveys do not, however, provide reliable data. Especially considering that...

My son Felix on the course of today's cyclist test for 6th graders in Denmark, in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. Today was a fun day in my son Felix' young life. Together with the other 6th grade students at La Cour Vej School, he took part in the Danish "cyklistprøve" - or Cyclist Test. The test has been around since 1947. It's not mandatory but many schools choose to do it. When kids are in the 1st grade they get a week of initial cyclist "how-to" regarding rules of the road, etc. Then, in 6th grade, they rock the test like today. In my opinion, the test is great but it's also rather symbolic. Most of these kids have been cycling in the city since they were little. Felix has rocked the cycle tracks since he was three and a half. Parents teach them the rules and, most important, give them the practice they need. By the time they get to the 6th grade, the majority have a great deal of on-asphalt experience on their bicycles. Our school chooses to ma...

It's all so confusing. Numbers indicating rise and falls in cycling levels. Although perhaps not as much as we think. Firstly, back in 2009 I made a bet with anyone who would take it. Cycling levels in Copenhagen had been stagnant for many years. In 2008, a whole new kind of stupid showed up in Denmark. The Danish Road Safety Council (Rådet for Sikker Trafik - or Rodet for Sikker Panik if you like) decided to expand their ideological campaigns by promoting bicycle helmets. They convinced the Danish Cyclists Federation (DCF) to join the parade. To this day, the DCF remain one of the few national cycling organisations in all of Europe who support promotion of bicycle helmets. Anyway, hardcore emotional propaganda hit the streets of Denmark in January 2008. As usual with such organisations, there was little science involved. An unsuspecting population were subjected to a one-sided view on helmets and not offered any balanced, scientific perspective. The Culture of Fear is power...

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you'll know all too well about what we call " Ignoring the Bull ". How in this car-centric society, non-motorised victim blaming is the norm. The status quo. You may also know the media tendency - mostly in non-cycling countries - to report about cyclists killed or injured in collisions with motorised traffic. "Hit by a truck/fast moving vehicle.... wasn't wearing a helmet." Written by journalists who are hopelessly uninformed (and perhaps uninterested) about a helmet's limited industrial design capability in collisions with vehicles . They never seem to write "Man fell from 3rd floor. Wasn't wearing a helmet." You get the point. What we're seeing lately is how the everpresent Culture of Fear is encroaching on our lives in a new(ish) way. The safety nannies and their lackies are now desperately trying to dictate what you, the citizen, wears. They are trying to make fashion choices fo...

One thing we've being going on about here at Copenhagenize for six years is the importance of promoting cycling positively to the great untapped well of potential cyclists. The 99%, if you will.   Two years ago, Copenhagenize informed you about a research project that was funded by the national bicycle fund entitled Effective Bicycle Promotion - Development of methodology to determine the effect on messages regarding marketing of bicycle traffic. We had teamed up with Thomas Krag Mobility Advice to investigate how promoting cycling with positive imagery was more beneficial than using images involving fear or perceived fear.  Two years on, the results of the study are in. Have a read. And now, more than ever before, endeavour to sell urban cycling to the 99% with positive messaging. Bicycle Marketing Messages: What Matters.  The report, collated by Sidsel Birk Hjuler and Thomas Krag, reveals some of the most important ingredients for the creation of ...