Cyclehack 2016 - Are we winning yet?

What happens when you get a room of passionate cyclists with loads of ideas on how to solve the zillion barriers to cycling in an innovation centre with a laser cutter with design thinking facilitators for 30 hours? 

I landed in a team with a cycling manager from the City of Sydney, a land use planner from a regional city in NSW, a student doing his Masters, and some other guy with a very deep voice and an epic beard. After an exercise of voting on each other's problem our team was to tackle the issue of new regulations in our state that were expensive and often more expensive to car offences.
Hence came the name "Team Rulz", tackling the barrier that is the fear of expensive fines and the fear of being an accidental "criminal" for infringing on these rules & regulations.

We further iterated our idea to gamifying the one mtere rule, to raise awareness amongst drivers about giving cyclists at least one metre of space when driving next to them and hopefully to give cyclists a sense of safety.

The video explains the challenge better.

At the end of the day the idea might not make it out to the real world and it was disappointing to think that. Then I reflected on how I felt and what I'd learnt from the weekend and the people I'd met. I found new energy to continue championing my ideas of creating a bike friendly society because I was meeting people and seeing people around the world at the same time working on those challenges. As the weekend panned out I was read about Ottowa introducing the 1 metre rule and the backlash from car drivers there. There was the tweet about Netherlands announcing their first bicycle mayor, always 10 steps ahead of the game. 
The game isn't over. We're on to the next level. I don't know how many levels there to win, but this weekend gave me a bit more juice to keep challenging and staying positive about a future where bike riding is safe and accessible for all.

More details about our project on the cyclehack website.