Consumers expect cars to become safer every year. But what about bicycles? Shouldn’t those become safer as well? After all, bikes are more common than cars, and riders are a lot more vulnerable to accidents. An estimated 45,000 bikes are involved in accidents each year, and more than 1,000 bike riders die every year from these accidents. (While this is a not as many as the more than 37,000 people who are killed in automobile accidents each year, it is an alarming number that deserves attention of all bike riders and corporations.)
Toyota shares the concerns of bike riders and is using the new safety features from the Toyota Camry to help provide riders with safer cycles. In a partnership New York-based Priority Bicycles, Toyota helped to create a prototype bike that includes sensors to detect objects and alert riders to danger through a multi-colored light panel. Using more than 500 feet of cables, along with Lidar sensors connected to a display on the handlebars, the bike alerts the rider to activity in front, behind, or to the side of the bike. When a dangerous situation occurs, the lights turn red; yellow is cautious; green is safe. The headlight on the bike also automatically moves up and down as the bike pace changes, increasing visibility farther out as speed increases.
The best part – a button on the bike blasts out the sound of a Camry car horn to announce its presence!
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Poll students: How many ride bikes routinely? Who has been injured by a car while riding their bike?
- Show a video of the bike: https://youtu.be/TQ-0zoSmyMs
- Priority Bikes’ Web site: https://www.prioritybicycles.com/
- Discuss the various promotional tactics that can be used for launching a product.
- Have students come up with tactics and list all the tactics on the white board (ex: billboards, print, direct mail, etc.).
- Divide students into groups to work on this exercise.
- Have each develop an innovative tactic that could be used to promote car safety features.
Source: Beltrone, G. (5 April, 2018). How to promote Toyota Camry’s new safety features? Build the world’s safest bike. Ad Week.
