Europe -The basics of riding a motorcycle never change and what we as rider’s face is as similar now as when motorcycles first hit the road – no pun intended.
There has been and still continues to be many methods from practical to theory that seek to improve the motorcycling experience that evolves around safety.
Looking back to 2009, one method used was the Lucky 13 cartoon series which was a safety message with a difference.
Each issue of the cartoon featured Lucky 13, a young motorcyclist and focused on a particular risk factor, giving tips and recommendations to riders on how to best tackle different situations through the example of the clumsy behaviour of Lucky 13.
Lucky 13 was developed by the European Motorcycle Industry – ACEM – within the framework of a European Road Safety Charter, from the European Commission.
The cartoon series, thirteen in total, was published throughout 2009 in various European languages and was hailed as a safety message with a difference even for those who considered themselves experienced or new to motorcycling, in a format that would appeal to younger and more mature riders alike.
Kevin Williams from Survival Skills www.survivalskills.co.uk was contacted by ACEM in 2008 to research the road safety messages. His brief, as Kevin explains on his Survival Skills website, was to use his, “Experience as a motorcyclist to identify the kinds of issues caused by the design of the riding environment itself causes powered two wheelers problems, for example, metal access covers, junctions, poor road surfaces and decreasing radius turns.”
“The next step was to turn these into a ‘storyboard’ so that a cartoon could be drawn around each theme. To do this I had to summarise each issue as succinctly as possible, in a way where the dialogue flowed from beginning to end. I also had to keep the language non-technical, not just so it could be understood by riders but also to aid translation! This stage of development took several more months of work.
Taking my words and design of the storyline for each cartoon, a Belgian cartoon studio created the character, Lucky 13, who features through the series of cartoons. He tackles the issues just as a new rider might and learns a lesson from each experience.”
Looking back through the Lucky 13 cartoons, certainly nothing much has changed that riders cannot relate to in the cartoons.
Original Sources – www.survivalskills.co.uk – www.acem.eu – (the cartoons in their various language appear to be no longer available)
Lucky 13 – Cartoon Series
Each cartoon is a pdf and around 1.5mb in size
Leave a Reply