Serena Rio with her bicycle - which she is riding on again!

In honor of her 22nd birthday, Serena Rio asked her friends and family to give money to the Safe Streets Fund to celebrate “the birthday I almost didn’t have, and the first Year Anniversary of that crappy day.”   We’ll let her tell her story in her own words.

Serena Rio: “I was badly mauled by a car February 4th, 2011. I was promptly chauffeured off to the hospital for 2 months, complete with broken bones, punctured lung, missing teeth, and a wheelchair sentence of 3 months.  I was riding in the bike lane, the right way, at 2:00 PM in the afternoon. The vehicle in question ran me over from behind. He fled the scene and was never caught.

For my birthday, the only thing I am asking of friends and family is to help make New York streets safer by donating to the Safe Streets Fund”

Serena’s family and friends have contributed over 2,500 dollars and counting.  This is enough to sponsor a free helmet fitting in a neighborhood where people don’t have easy access to helmets; Or enough to host a Bike Bonanza in collaboration with Bike New York and Recycle a Bicycle;  Or create materials for delivery cyclists in Spanish and Chinese –  the possibilities are endless.

Consider joining Serena’s initiative and give a donation.  As Serena says “Let’s try and prevent a repeat for everyone on the streets! New York isn’t going to fix itself!”

Join Us in Our Mission

You can be a part of the Five Boro Bike Team. Just email Jamie DeFour at Bike New York to join. By fund-raising on behalf of Bike New York and the Safe Streets Fund, team members make possible free and inventive programs that promote youth and adult cycling and responsible riding in New York City. We’re working together to increase smart cycling in New York City through education and encouragement.

Team Member Benefits

• Guaranteed entry into the 2012 TD Five Boro Bike Tour
• A meet and greet with NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Bike New York CEO Ken Podziba at the start of the Tour
• Breakfast at the start
• Five Boro Bike Tour official merchandise
• Lunch at the Festival

Five Boro Bike Team members are required to raise a minimum of $750 and all donations must be in by April 20th!  Bike New York provides members of the Five Boro Bike Team with their own customizable fund-raising pages and offers regular access to staff support for fund-raising assistance.

Team Members Raise Money for:

Bike Events

Bike Bonanzas feature free, fun activities for the whole family: a Learn to Ride class and Bike Driver’s Ed clinic for kids, free helmets for kids and adults, a kids bike swap, bike registration, and more. Every year, we host ten events throughout the city, focusing on underserved communities.

Girls at PS 76 enjoying a Bicycling Basics class at school.

Bike to School Day encourages middle school students in a growing list of communities to ride to school. BNY and Safe Street Fund kick off these events, and leave a how-to manual to help any school citywide create and plan to promote bicycling as a way to get to school any day of the year. Studies show that children who ride a bike two or three times a week are less likely to be overweight. Regular exercise reduces depression and increases kids’ self-esteem.

Education and Outreach

Bike Smart safety guides to provocative television ads, which helps DOT to reach more riders where they are.

Citywide safety education and outreach to highlighting each person’s responsibility for sharing the roadways – and classes and riding experiences directly in communities that need access to biking.

Safe Rides Home reminded revelers that New Yorkers can count on friends and family members as designated drivers, as well as the city’s transportation professionals: cab, livery and bus drivers and subway operators.

DOT’s You the Man campaign is designed to reach all New Yorkers and encourage smart behavior that makes the city’s streets safer by keeping drunk drivers off the roads. The slogan, creative designs and humorous approach are especially designed to resonate with men ages 21-39, who statistics show are most likely to get into a DWI-related crash or accept a ride from an intoxicated driver.

New ads, using humorous winter holiday scenarios, ran through the New Year online as well as outdoors. The campaign features a website, Facebook and Twitter social media channels, and a free iPhone app that uses GPS to help users find the closest subway stops and livery car services.

The new record lows come as the DOT has undertaken unprecedented safety engineering initiatives and public education efforts. Recent examples include safety upgrades to 60 miles of streets in 2011, including more than 20 miles of street redesigns, and the city’s first Neighborhood Slow Zone in the Bronx. Pedestrian countdown signals were installed at 1,100 intersections citywide in 2011. Safety campaigns have continued to pair engineering with education and outreach.

“This will be the city’s safest traffic year in the more than 100 years since records were kept,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We’ve made progress in every area of traffic safety due to our willingness to take new, creative approaches to longstanding challenges with safety redesigns and through aggressive traffic enforcement. We’ve focused on making our streets safer for all who use them – no matter how they decide to travel – and it’s another reason New Yorkers are living longer and another reason our city is safer than ever before.”

Read the press release for more information and detailed statistics.

New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced “Curbside Haiku”, a new safety education campaign composed of 216 signs featuring colorful artwork and haiku by artist John Morse. They are installed at high-crash locations near cultural institutions and middle and high schools citywide to draw attention to the critical importance of shared responsibility among pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists in keeping New York City’s streets safe. The program is a joint effort of DOT’s Safety Education and Urban Art programs.

“We’re putting poetry into motion with public art to make New York City’s streets even safer,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “These signs complement our engineering and education efforts to create a steady rhythm for safer streets in all five boroughs.”

“Curbside Haiku seeks to merge public art with public awareness to infuse a bit of beauty and joy into the public sphere with the images while underscoring the realities of the message with poetry,” said John Morse. “I’m aiming to engage, edify and inform and nothing does that better than art.”

Paid for using local traffic offense fines, the series includes 12 bright, eye-catching designs with accompanying haiku that each delivers a targeted safety message by focusing on one transportation mode. Half of the signs will be hung in pairs, with the image and text from its accompanying haiku. The other half will feature an image with a QR code that lets New Yorkers discover the safety message via their smartphones.

DOT installed multiple 8”x8” signs at strategic locations where passers-by can discover and decode their safety messages. The signs will be on view from now until next fall at a dozen hubs across the five boroughs, including near Brooklyn’s Transit Museum and the Brooklyn Museum; the Bronx Hub, Bronx Museum/Grand Concourse and Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden; Manhattan’s Studio Museum of Harlem and MoMA/International Center for Photography; Queens’s Jamaica Center for the Arts and the Staten Island Museum. The signs were fabricated at DOT’s sign shop in Maspeth, Queens. A map of the 12 hubs and series of signs is available at www.nyc.gov/dot.

You can purchase copies of these signs here as well as an exclusive Curbside Haiku poster. Proceeds go to benefit the Safe Streets Fund and our work.

Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan celebrated DOT’s 50,00th free helmet fitting on August 6th, during the first week of Summer Streets. Since 2007, DOT’s Safety Education program has promoted bicycle safety through the free giveaway and fitting of stylish bicycle helmets at events in all five boroughs.

Helmets are crucial to keeping bicyclists safe, and are required by law for those age 13 and younger.

Bike Smart!

DOT pilot study completed last year found that countdown signals were effective at helping pedestrians avoid getting caught in the middle of a crosswalk when the signal changes, and particularly at wider streets. The analysis found that serious pedestrian crashes are about two-thirds deadlier on major street corridors than on smaller local streets or specific intersections. Other safety steps as part of the agency’s action plan include the upcoming pilot program in Claremont, the Bronx, to test the city’s first residential 20 mph speed zone.

See the map of planned locations for pedestrian countdown signals and further information on the Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan as well as the DOT’s anti-speeding campaign.

The winning entry will receive a VIP suite at the Staten Island Yankees’ August 25 game. As part of the prize, a You the Man bus will be provided for transportation to and from the game for up to 20 people, courtesy of the Staten Island Yankees.

Visit You the Man for more information

New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today announced the installation of skeleton speed boards on two New York City streets in Brooklyn and Queens, the first in a series of citywide installations to call dramatic attention to the potentially fatal consequences of exceeding the city’s 30 m.p.h. speed limit.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the skeleton speed boards last month when he joined United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Commissioner Sadik-Khan to highlight new traffic-safety initiatives designed to further drive down already record-low traffic fatalities and injuries in New York City in conjunction with the U.N.’s launch of its Decade of Action for Road Safety campaign.

The skeleton speed boards display an LED image of a skeleton next to the words “Slow Down” if a passing motorist exceeds the 30 m.p.h. These new speed boards supplement traditional speed boards that display speeds of passing motorists.

Read more at the New York Times

With the support of the City Department of Education, Bike New York led a “Bike Safe, Bike Smart” assembly to teach bike safety and the rules of road to students at I.S. 302 and grades 6-8 at P.S. 89. DOT also provided and fitted helmets to students signed up for Bike to School Day while the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) arranged for loaned bikes from nonprofit Recycle-a-Bicycle. The DOT-led ride included four routes, each covering nearly a mile. The Commissioner and Podziba greeted the students, teachers and other school officials as they arrived at I.S. 302.