For the past five years, Phoenix has been giving out comic books encouraging bike safety to 12- to 17-year-olds. Recently, the comics have generated some controversy, because of their graphic nature.
The stories typically feature two cyclists, one of whom makes a good choice, the other makes a bad one; the books show the consequences of those decisions, often in pretty gory detail.
Kerry Wilcoxon, traffic engineer with Phoenix’s Street Department, is in charge of the Safety and Neighborhood Traffic Section. He talked about the new comics.
The city’s gotten a grant for this year to develop a bike safety series aimed at kindergarten through third-graders. Wilcoxon said those should be ready by the fall — and will probably have less gore in them.
