Here’s what I think is really important about this video in itself and as an example: it applies modern promotional and media techniques to put across the message of cyclist integration into the normal traffic mix. We who advocate that need to do a lot more like this. The paint and path crowd regularly uses those techniques — and goes further, using thought-terminating clichés, pandering to popular misconceptions and twisting the meanings of words, while we too often get tied up with technical details.
On the other hand, I think that it is possible and useful to expose the intellectual bankruptcy of the PnP promotions — I’m thinking particularly of some bike box promotions I’ve seen. Oh, how I especially savor the one with Legos from Calgary which intones “same rights, same rules” while showing different rights and different rules…how Orwellian…or the one from Tallahassee with a green box sliding along a sidewalk, and a sound track repeating the incantation “bike box” so as to drum that expression into the mind of the public…
