How I wish this were a parody

I managed to stumble across this Department For Transport website, “Be Bright, Be Seen.” It is aimed at young children and after studying the site and playing the game, the main messages of the site seem to be:

• Cycling and walking are very, very, very dangerous and abnormal activities
• If you choose to engage in this kind of reckless behaviour, it is you, the child, the victim who is responsible for ensuring you do not become the victim of a negligent motorist
• To do this you must dress up like an Xmas tree whenever you dare to have the audacity to want to cross a road
• If you do somehow manage to live long enough to become an adult, it will be one of your basic human rights to drive a heavy & fast vehicle inattentively in the presence of children, without the terrible burden of any responsibility if you hit one, unless they are wearing the Xmas tree outfit that is. Then you might be partly to blame.

Taken from the DFT’s victim-blaming website Flash game.

Obviously the bitch had it coming. Taken from the same site.

I also found links to some “Educational material,” for children, again provided by the government. This included Amir’s story:

“After I'd opened up all they presents – they wanted to get the birthday cake ready – so I decided to go over to Jordan's to show him the bike. I was sorted. I had my helmet, my trainers with the reflective strips and I even clipped on the lights and made sure the batteries worked before I set off. Well, it'd be dark by the time I was coming back, you see. You need to be seen by other road users. That's really important. Be Bright, Be Seen. They're always saying that in school. I was only going to Jordan's so I didn't bother with the pads or the gloves.

The road was quite quiet but there were loads and loads cars parked all the way along. Anyway, I'm going up and down gears, testing the brakes.

Then, just as I looked up, this car door suddenly opened - right in front of me. I tried to brake but it was too late. It knocked the wind right out of me. Banged my chin, broke my nose and cut all my hands up too. Good job I had my new helmet on.”

This is a great way to promote healthy, ethical and socially responsible transport to the next generation. Pads and gloves as a safety measure? No mention of the fact that the motorist who doored him was responsible for checking that there was no oncoming traffic at the time. By the sound of it, the helmet didn’t do a thing to help him, as you’d expect.

“It's not put me off my bike though. No chance. But I'll be a lot more careful in the future. Deffo. Just as soon as I'm better... Two weeks and counting.”

I bet you will, it was your own fault that an adult opened a car door right in front of you after all. Being a kid is full of responsibility, I bet he can’t wait to grow up and get his driving license so he can do away with being responsible once and for all.

EDIT: Email the DfT about this awful site if you feel as I do. Hopefully a bigger blog which specialises in this kind of disgrace will help spread awareness of this DfT crap.