While Brussels hasn’t reached Amsterdam’s status of cycling paradise just yet, the town does its best to offer a bicycle-friendly urban landscape for those who want to commute to work using the two-wheeled vehicle. Cycling in Brussels is on the rise. The state’s officials encourage people to keep commuting on a bike and they plan to create a network of 15 cycle superhighways by 2025.
Sure, riding a bike might be the most wonderful declaration of love for the environment—not to mention that it has a lot of health benefits too—but is it really that safe to cycle around Brussels’s streets? Unfortunately, it isn’t. One in four riders commutes without using a bike light. That means that a biker’s odds of being involved in an accident are higher by 25%.
In an effort to improve these statistics that do not show the best side of the city, governmental organization Bike for Brussels reached to integrated communications agency mortierbrigade and asked the creatives to help solve the problem in an ingenious way.
The Brussels-based agency that lives to “create ideas for brands” tapped into everything the creativity technology can offer and created an interactive installation forming a new “Bike Light Lane“. The innovative panel takes the form of a tunnel which was installed on the city’s streets. Within its walls, the team installed an intelligent system that turns ON when cyclists ride through with their lights switched OFF, offering a visual lesson about what could happen when riders decide to cycle in an ‘incognito mode’.
A memorable lesson unfolds on the tunnel’s walls in a form of a video projection that starts when a series of sensors installed within the panel detects a biker that rides around with no lights.
The moment the cyclists enter the tunnel, an interactive animation of an avatar that does use bike lights starts to follow them. The screen allows the protagonists to see their virtual friend traveling at the same speed. But suddenly, the computer-generated film takes a dramatic turn as another virtual cyclist with no bike lights meets the tragic consequences of not using them.
The interactive adventure, imagined by design studio beyond.io, made the riders witness a traffic accident by making them part of the tragic experience without suffering the unpleasant consequences that come along with such an awful event.
The campaign allowed participants to literally experience the age-old expression “see the light at the end of the tunnel.” After the whole virtual adventure they’d gone through, riders were given a shiny gift to keep them company during their next trips on the two-wheeled vehicles. And most importantly to keep them safe!
“Years of traditional campaigns were unable to change people’s behavior when it came to using bike lights. Research showed that cyclists believed they were sufficiently visible in the surrounding city lights, even though they were not. So we decided to show them they were invisible because sometimes you have to see it to believe it,” says Philippe De Ceuster, Partner and Creative Director at mortierbrigade.
The Bike Light Lane started to welcome cyclists from the first day of wintertime. During the campaign, more than 3000 bicycle enthusiasts learned the real importance of bike lights. Join the movement. “Be bright, use a light!”
Credits:
Client: Bike for Brussels
Agency: mortierbrigade
Design: beyond