Exchanging Places - From Preston to P-Elephant and Castle
(Okay, so I need to work on the alliteration.) The past week has been an awesome one for our Exchanging Places drives; our first stop was Preston’s Go Sky Ride at the stunning - albeit a little wet(!) - Avenham Park. The Fire truck, lent to us courtesy of Preston Fire Brigade, proved a popular attraction amongst the young children, who wanted to get up on the ‘nee -nor’. Whilst the children played with the lights and sounds, we were able to engage with parents as to the purpose of the Fire truck being there - to warn cyclists about the dangers of blind-spots and the visibility limitations associated with high cabs. No sooner were the children down from the cab, then mums and dads got up to see for themselves. Fun and educational was the aim of the day.
Fast forward a couple of days and it was off to York to celebrate the launch of Cycle Alert on First Bus by doing another Exchanging Places event, except exactly the opposite way! This time, drivers took to the saddles, to gain a cyclist’s perspective of the road and to learn more about using retro-fit technologies to help detect cyclists. You can find out more about booking your fleet in for a safer urban driving course here.
Next, it was back to Elephant and Castle, London in a joint Exchanging Places effort with the Metropolitan Police Cycle Task Force, partners Keltbray, bike maintenance geniuses Have Bike and contractor Lend Lease, who organised the event. The great weather encouraged a great turn out - we managed to give away 50 in the space of a couple of hours, queues formed for bike checks and bikes were registered in association with Bike Register, in a bid to deter thieves. Cyclists who took part also got to work with full bellies, as free bacon sarnies were offered to participants, courtesy of Lend Lease.
All in all a great week of song to the cycle safety drum! If you couldn’t make any events this week, no bother, just check out future Exchanging Places events on the website. In the mean time, we encourage you to watch this short video, to see what it’s all about. Safe cycling everybody x
