Thousands of students on a bike ride demands large safety measures. New for this year is that all bicyclists in the tandem relay are to be tracked by GPS.
Since the 1970’s students from Lund have tirelessly biked the nearly 24 hour tandem relay run between Gothenburg and Lund. This Friday marks the next occasion. 21 busses filled to the brim will transport tandem cyclists and their supporters to Götaplatsen. From there, 20 stages will be completed and two bicyclists for each stage will have the chance to pedal their team slightly closer to Lund. If they are able to find their way, that is.
The Sport Collegiate, Idrottskollegiet, who are arranging the relay, have previously had difficulties when it comes to efficiently finding bicyclists who get lost. Therefore they’ve decided to improve safety this year by fitting all bikes with GPS devices.
”We will be able to track the cyclists’ positions and there will also be an emergency button that the cyclists can press in case they lose their way. This results in us being able to keep tabs on everyone and also to quickly arrive at the scene in case of injuries”, says the Sport Collegiate’s chairman Hannes Henriksson.
As far back as 2012, safety was increased by the adoption of a general ban on liquor, which meant that participants were no longer allowed to drink hard liquor.
”Since the liquor ban was put into effect the amount of cases where the ambulance was required dropped from 280 to 70. It’s been very effective and we hope that it will make an even larger difference this year”, says Henriksson.
What about the risk of getting lost, do many students disappear on the road?
”Last year there were three or four cases of bicyclists getting lost. But if there’s a few of them sitting in a bus stop it’s not always a simple matter to find them. There’s probably hundreds of those kinds of bus stops along the way, the GPS solves any problems like that.”
Why is the use of GPS so important if there’s only a handful of students who are getting lost?
”The entire event is affected as we are forced to peel off cars that are meant for other purposes to find the stragglers. That is less than optimal.”
Between May 10 and 11 the relay is underway and if everyone goes according to plan the Sport Collegiate will succeed in increasing the safety without affecting the student’s collective tandem experience.
”We want to pull off a fun student event which at the same time remains as safe as possible”, says Hannes Henriksson.
Text: Linus Gisborn
Translation: Jesper Lodin
Photo: Lovisa Wallin
