Circulate SD held a party last night to launch their latest weapon in the battle for safe streets: Captain VZ, for “Vision Zero.” She's the star of a new comic book, developed to support local educational efforts for school children—or anyone who loves comic books.
Safe Routes to Schools programs—usually aimed at younger students—are sometimes the only traffic education that California students get. Circulate SD supports Safe Routes to Schools programming, and a few years ago developed the super hero Captain VZ to help make the program fun and exciting—as well as to explain the basics of Vision Zero, which for San Diego means no traffic deaths by 2025. They would send Captain VZ out to schools to talk to students, and developed a dance video to remind drivers to watch for pedestrians.
Grants from Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety gave them the opportunity to produce this comic book, which will be distributed to kids through Safe Routes to Schools programs throughout the region.
Colin Parent, Executive Director of Circulate SD, says that the group is working on encouraging more jurisdictions to do Safe Routes programming. “Our hope is this grant will bring in other funders that want to help with that kind of education in school districts,” he added.
Streetsblog California editor Melanie Curry has been thinking about transportation, and how to improve conditions for bicyclists, ever since commuting to school by bike long before bike lanes were a thing. She was Managing Editor at the East Bay Express, editor of Access Magazine for the University of California Transportation Center, and earned her Masters in City Planning from UC Berkeley.
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