With Louisiana ranking No. 2 in cyclist death rates per capita, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a new LSU Student Government resolution aims to tackle students’ lack of knowledge about transportation safety and laws.
Center for Advising and Counseling senator Cassidy Riley and University College Center for Freshman Year senator Whitney Osburn co-authored the resolution, which will provide optional online transportation safety training to students. It was passed in the Student Senate on April 5.
“Actually, last spring … I was working with Tammy Millican at Facility Services,” Riley said. “We were just talking about how it was surprising how many students didn’t know you weren’t supposed to ride your bike on the sidewalks or in the Quad.”
Riley notes that, in addition to her conversations with Millican, her concern stemmed from hearing stories of biking incidents from her friends and her mother, who heard of several instances of students hit by bicycles and cars via a Facebook group for parents. Osburn joined the initiative after she was nearly hit by a car on Dalrymple Drive when riding her bike to work off campus.
Writing the initiative, the senators’ main concern was ensuring vehicles would share the road with cyclists, while also improving pedestrian safety by keeping bikers off sidewalks and crosswalks, Osburn said.
The state’s high ranking for biker casualties per capita motivated Osburn. She said she wanted to do her part to make sure no student became a part of that statistic.
SGR No. 20 aims “to urge and request the office of Facility Services [to] create a web-based transportation and sustainability training module.” This module will have a similar format to the MyStudentBody, which is a required web-based course on alcohol and its dangers for all incoming students.
Unlike MyStudentBody, the new training module will likely be optional with possible incentives available upon completion of the course, Riley said.
“Both Whitney and I are going to be working a lot with Tammy Millican … and also with some people from [Campus Sustainability],” Riley said. “We’ll be working with them a lot over the summer developing how we want it to look [and] the types of questions we want to ask.”
Students can expect to see a trial launch of the training module in fall 2017, Riley said.
“We really just want to help to educate people,” Riley said. “I think that would really help in preventing a lot of accidents that do happen.”
