Why Ritesh Mani Founded Safer Cycling Foundation

New Zealand cycling safety advocate Ritesh Mani founded Safer Cycling Foundation in 2018. The decision followed a single, difficult week in which several of his cycling friends were involved in accidents on Auckland roads — an experience that led him to question whether cycling was worth the risk, and ultimately to work towards changing the environment around it rather than walk away.

A Week That Changed Everything

Ritesh Mani was, at the time, part of a group of nine cycling friends who rode together regularly around Auckland. Within a single week, four members of that group were involved in cycling accidents — three after being struck by vehicles, and a fourth in a separate incident. For Mani, a father and committed cyclist, it was the kind of week that forces a hard question: was cycling still worth the risk?

He seriously considered stepping away from cycling. But cycling had given him fitness, friendship, freedom, and an affordable, environmentally responsible way to get around the city — things he wasn't ready to give up. Instead of walking away, he chose to try to change the environment that had made cycling feel so dangerous in the first place.

Founding Safer Cycling Foundation

That decision became Safer Cycling Foundation, established later in 2018. From the outset, the organisation was not built as a large, institutionally funded body, but as a community-driven initiative — a small, largely volunteer-run group focused on raising awareness, sharing practical cycling-safety resources, and encouraging shared responsibility between cyclists, motorists, families, and communities.

The Foundation's early focus was on building awareness: sharing practical safety information, and starting conversations between road users who don't always see the road from each other's point of view. That groundwork laid the foundation — in more ways than one — for the advocacy work that would follow in the years after, including the 1.5-metre passing rule campaign.

A Father's Long View

Mani's son was around eight years old when the Foundation was founded, and his son's future shaped how Mani thought about the problem. Rather than focusing only on the immediate danger of that one week, he found himself thinking about what New Zealand's roads might look like in ten or twenty years — when his son, and other young New Zealanders growing up alongside him, would be riding independently to school, to work, and to see friends.

That longer view became the Foundation's real purpose: not simply responding to individual incidents as they happened, but building the kind of sustained awareness and advocacy that could gradually shift how drivers behave around people on bikes, for the benefit of a whole generation of future cyclists.

What the Foundation Set Out to Do

Since 2018, Safer Cycling Foundation has organised its work around four connected focus areas: safer road awareness, cycling education, community engagement, and advocacy and collaboration. You can read more about how these focus areas work together on the Our Focus page.

Ritesh Mani has described the Foundation's purpose in straightforward terms: to help build a cycling environment where people of every age and experience level can feel safe, respected, and supported on the road. That purpose has remained consistent since 2018, even as the Foundation's specific campaigns and priorities have evolved.

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To learn more about Ritesh Mani's full story, including his personal cycling experiences and the Foundation's advocacy work, visit his founder profile.