'Bike gangs' on Windsor billboards meant to show human side of cycling

Cycling advocates in Windsor are launching a billboard campaign designed to remind drivers the helmet-wearing riders they see travelling on two wheels alongside them, are people — not a problem.

The campaign is all about the "bike gangs" of Windsor, or the many types of people who take to the road on their bicycles, including children playing, university students heading to class and autoworkers riding to the plant.

It has been put together by Bike Windsor Essex. Lori Newton, the group's executive director, said the idea is to show the faces of real cyclists and to drive home the message that they are people.

"The overall purpose of the campaign is to normalize or humanize cycling, so that the community recognizes that there is a real person under that helmet that they see," she told CBC Radio's Windsor Morning in an interview. 

"It's something that we have been trying to do for a long time, but I don't think we're necessarily getting through. We know that motorists pass an individual on a bicycle who is wearing a helmet and many of them see them as an obstacle, as opposed to a human being who is a mother, a father, a son, a daughter."

The first billboard has been posted near the stretch of Dougall Avenue, where that road merges with Ouellette Avenue. It went up on Tuesday.

Newton said the campaign will feature several images of different groups of cyclists. The images will appear on nine billboards across the city over the next few weeks.