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Charmingly Didactic: An Illustrated Guide to Why Biking Can Be Scary (But Doesn’t Have to Be)

Illustrator Vreni captures a big reason biking infrastructure is needed: pure joy. Er, safety.
Charmingly Didactic: An Illustrated Guide to Why Biking Can Be Scary (But Doesn’t Have to Be)
Vreni perfectly captures how it feels to ride in the new protected bike lane at Lake Merritt in Oakland. All illustrations by Vreni

Illustrator Vreni just posted a short illustrated treatise at The Nib on the importance of designing streets to make biking feel safer so more people will bike. The image at the top of this post captures another reason why this is key: pure joy.

Vreni’s post begins with her dilemma as a new resident in Oakland who wants to ride a bike but is frightened by statistics, bad driving, and helmet-shaming drivers. She throws in a little bit of education about infrastructure, and even finds a way to illustrate some safety statistics. And her post celebrates some of the changes that are coming to cities–like Oakland’s newest protected bike lanes, above, and road diets and bike boulevards.

The Nib posts nonfiction comics on political and current events, and if you head over there to check out the rest of Vreni’s work, I can’t be held responsible for the time you spend looking at all the other posts.

Hat tip to Robert Prinz, and thanks to The Nib.

Photo of Melanie Curry
Streetsblog California editor Melanie Curry has been thinking about transportation, and how to improve conditions for bicyclists, since her early days commuting by bike to UCLA long ago. She was Managing Editor at the East Bay Express, and edited Access Magazine for the University of California Transportation Center. She also earned her Masters in City Planning from UC Berkeley.

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