This is great. Direct marketing of the very best kind. Transport for London have been blitzing bikes in town with these flyers, which slot onto your handlebars. They’re printed in a single colour, which is nice and economical, and the stock’s been coated so that they don’t go soggy if it rains before you return to your bike. And the call to action is dead simple: “Use this lorry and your webcam to see the blind spots come to life in 3D at tfl.gov.uk/seetheblindspot“.
When you hold the flyer up to your webcam (you can print your own flyer out on the site if you don’t have one already), it kicks in with a spot of augmented reality, showing a lorry on your screen, which is surrounded by bikes that sit in the lorry’s blind spots. You can rotate the flyer / lorry to see the blind spots to both the front and back of the lorry. And at the same time, the key message scrolls onto the side of the lorry. And the wheels turn too!
Good work TFL.
A couple of things to remember when driving around trucks (in a car or on a bike):
1) When following a truck, if you can’t see at least one of the mirrors, the truck driver can’t see you and may not know you’re there.
2) A fully-loaded truck may take up to 20 times as long to stop as you do, so if you pull in front of a truck and brake, this is probably going to be a really bad idea.
Mike.
P.S. Since trucks don’t stop quickly, truck drivers generally look for the open lane, the widest shoulder, the shallowest ditch, and the least explosive vehicle – in that order.