For all bikers: This essential guide for biking safely is a must-read

Cycling Matters tells us how their safety guide came about
Oct 22, 2020

LAST YEAR, there were 1,759 bicycle related accidents reported in Metro Manila.

At first glance, it seems a small number, especially compared to the more than 120,000 total road crashes reported in the 2019 Metro Manila Accident and Reporting System (MMARAS). (For perspective, that’s equivalent to 334 road accidents per day.)

Will the numbers change this year?

It’s hard to say. For many months, the pandemic lockdown barred most cars from venturing out into the streets. With no public transportation, commuters turned to biking to get around the city. Shops began reporting sold-out numbers. Even PBA players began bringing out their bikes more.

BIKING ON THE RISE
BIKING ON THE RISE

    Data released from the MMARAS showed that there were only 618 road crashes from June to August.

    That’s a massive drop compared to the 4,652 accidents in the same period last year.

    But even so, the gradual loosening of pandemic restrictions means that the old volume of cars and public utility vehicles may possibly go head-to-head with the many new bikers out in the streets.

    This became added motivation for bicycle advocacy group Cycling Matters to come out with a comprehensive bike safety guide for Filipinos.

    “Seeing more people riding bikes during the pandemic really pushed us to work on it urgently,” the group said in an interview with SPIN Life.

    The collective — which has been actively writing about bicycle issues for the past two years — had been wanting to publish this guide for a long time.

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    “We've always wanted to come up with a safety guide for cyclists,” they said. “Even before the pandemic, we learned that one major barrier to bike commuting is the lack of access to information about road safety. Some people were getting into it unprepared and a lot wouldn't even consider it out of fear that it's impossible to commute by bike.”

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    Of course, necessity trumps fear. In this case, pandemic restrictions have turned a lot of Filipinos into bikers. Cycling Matters want to make sure that they have the right knowledge to bike safely, especially in an urban landscape that was (more often than not) designed without bicycles in mind.

    Hence, the Guide to Safe Cycling. Or, as the Filipino version has it: Gabay sa Ligtas na Pagbibisikleta. (According to their website, they’re planning to publish versions in more languages soon.)

    According to Cycling Matters, “We would've launched it much earlier in the year but we also wanted to make sure that we came up with something that's visual and well thought out.”

    The guide is freely available online. On Facebook, both the English and Filipino versions have been shared by around 2,000 users, as of posting.

    But the group also worked hard to get a print version up. “We also didn't want it to just be available online,” they said, “so it really helped that we found partners who funded the print production of thousands of physical copies.”

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    The print version of the Guide is available in several bike shops: TryOn Marketing and Built Bicycles in Makati, Big Barns Bikes in Mandaluyong, and Erwin’s Bike Parts and Pete’s Bikes in Quezon City.

    “We feel that the cycling community deserves nothing less as a growing community of people who are shifting to a more sustainable and humane mode of transport,” they said.

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