Without caution, passengers opening their car doors can accidently hit and injure cyclists. Aware of this serious problem we, The Road Knights, decided to solve the problem by educating people through various actions.
The ideas
Data from reliable sources indicate that 17% of bicycle accidents are caused by improperly opening car doors alongside the road. Many of the members of our team also have had the experience of being nearly hit by passing bikes when opening a car door. Acknowledging this situation, we are calling ourselves The Road Knights, and are aiming to focus on this door safety problem.
We conducted a wide survey online, and it turned out that nine out of ten people in the survey had the experience of nearly hitting others when opening their car doors. It is shocking to find out that car doors can cause so many accidents and loss of lives. We, therefore, were able to confirm the problem and decided to focus mainly on students our community. It takes one second to open a car door, but it can actually be a choice between life and death.
In order to avoid such tragedies, we decided to hold campaigns to raise people’s awareness about this particular issue. It’s crucial and necessary to make people aware of the seriousness of the problem, and be more cautious thereafter.
In our meeting, we also decided to focus on our school first, centering on the students, as the problem is more likely to happen in a densely populated region, like our school. With online and offline activities, we could then enlarge the slope to the community, and other districts in Shanghai.
The initiatives
We, The Road Knights, adopted a combination of online and offline approaches to raise people's awareness of the “door problem”.
To spread our ideas to the most people, we made good use of WeChat, the most popular social platform in China. We published a total of 18 well-written online articles introducing the festival of the day, and linking it to the significance of watching out before opening a car door. We also published an introductory article specifically explaining our concern about car doors and calling on readers to be aware of the door issue. The WeChat articles can be found under the account, YIaYIFDIS, or on our own website (tl1999.wix.com/roadsafetyknight). Many articles have received good reviews, inviting more people to subscribe to our official WeChat account. Up to now, the number of subscribers has exceeded 100 and aggregate viewed times of articles has reached nearly 5,000. The snapshots of our WeChat account are presented in our PowerPoint.
What's more, we developed an online game related to door-opening. The key to the game is to open the door at the correct time and not hit other vehicles. The game can also be downloaded on our website (tl1999.wix.com/roadsafetyknight). The game is available to everyone and is suited for anyone who cares about road safety. We invited students in our school to play the game; we received good reviews which were collected in the uploaded "Feedbacks from students and teachers" document.
A series of offline activities ensued. Starting from our school, one member dressed up as the famous character Kumanon wearing our WeChat QR code. Then, we set our feet a step further to Century Park. We made attractive knight armor out of paper boxes and advertised our project at the park. In both instances, we attracted people to join us and scan the QR code to follow our project. Another offline activity has been the distribution of originally designed bookmarks with our QR code and a one-sentence reminder of a safety concern. We also designed slogans that remind people to pay more attention to passing vehicles before getting out of their cars.
We also successfully gained support from the Public Transportation Company in Qingpu District, as well as the BoCai Advertisement and Media Company, to sponsor us and put the slogans on EVERY PUBLIC BUS IN QINGPU DISTRICT. Plus, we spoke with bus drivers in Qingpu District to share our ideas and concerns.
From both online and offline approaches, we Road Knights have indeed influenced people in our community and extended this influence further out into our city.
For further details, please check on our PPT.
