Advocacy & Safety - 291 people want to learn to ride a bike-- Can you help?

I stumbled onto this. Looks like it is a website of personal goals.
Out of 852,356 people in 11,467 cities these are the top bicyling related things that users want to do. Notice that worrying about bike safety is not on the list.

http://www.43things.com/tag/bicycle

Ride my bike more 639 people
Learn to ride a bike 291 people
Reduce my ecological footprint 222 people
buy a bike 193 people
See the Tour de France live 177 people
Buy a bicycle 138 people
Bike to work 116 people
Bike a century 102 people
Get a bike 96 people
Bike across the United States 85 people
Ride my bike to work 71 people
Fix my bike 69 people
Build a fixed-gear bicycle 57 people
Learn to ride a bicycle 56 people
Bicycle across the country 53 people

Is there information as to the geographical location of the people? If there is then maybe some of here can help if they are in our area.

If these folks can be located I think the first thing after that is to ask if they want help or advice. If they do then figure out the best way to provide that. For example some of them may want to take the LAB's courses to be better cyclists. For others who do not know how to ride a bike there could be an education program set up to teach them. For those that do not own & bike & are going to buy one point them in the right direction, meaning away from the X-Mart stores & to the LBS's, so they have their questions asnwered to purchase a bike.

LAB courses? They want to learn how to ride a bike. As in learn how to balance. I didn't need to take a LAB course for that.

The never-ending search for disciples goes on, I see.

I know the LAB does not teach people how to ride a bike if they do not already know. But they do teach those that do know how to ride a bike better. At least the Road One Course I took did. There would be a seperate education to teach those that do not know how to ride. It would be 2 seperate education formats.

Is there information as to the geographical location of the people? If there is then maybe some of here can help if they are in our area.

If these folks can be located I think the first thing after that is to ask if they want help or advice. If they do then figure out the best way to provide that. For example some of them may want to take the LAB's courses to be better cyclists. For others who do not know how to ride a bike there could be an education program set up to teach them. For those that do not own & bike & are going to buy one point them in the right direction, meaning away from the X-Mart stores & to the LBS's, so they have their questions asnwered to purchase a bike.

Here's one in NC. She probably just wants some one on one time with a big handed cyclist.

http://www.43things.com/person/mz_midnightlady

Click around you'll see where they are.

Notice that worrying about bike safety is not on the list.

And what 16 year old says they want to learn how to drive defensively? Most people don't give a d@mn about safety until they either get into trouble or start to feel threatened. It's human nature.

I'm not sure why you mention the absence of people who want to "worry about bike safety" in the list.

The question was "what do you want to do with your life?" If I answered "climb a mountain" it would be assumed that I meant that I wanted to learn how to climb correctly and safely and then do it.

I have to assume that all those that answered "bike to work", "bike a century" etc implicitly meant that they wanted to do so safely.

Jalopy

My point is reflected other places as well, that people site "worried about safety" as a reason to why they do not ride more only about 18% of the time. So other things are more of a factor in encouraging cycling. But yes this web site focuses on the positive, desires, goals and action plans to meet those goals.

My concern is with increasing the number of cyclists. So that someday they will support pro biking legislation. And that legislation will implement laws and plans to make biking safer.

Since there are so few cyclists, I figure that we need to grow our numbers to be more effective, not scream more loudly about safety. That just makes us look like one-track fanatics who support a dangerous hobby. And it's not even really dangerous, compared to many other activities, like eating.