When did you last see kids riding bikes on the street with their parents?
I suspect the answer is 'not recently' or 'not often' and that if you did, you probably saw me and my kids, or one of the three other families that I know that let their kids ride on the road.
I was reading this short article Cycling Kids: The True Indicator of a Bike-Friendly City and it reminded me how far we have to go. It suggests that “When kids feel confident enough to ride on their own — and parents let them — then your city has truly earned the ‘bike-friendly’ label.” Yup. But before we get to that, we need to pass an even earlier stage: When parents ride on the road with their kids... then your city is heading towards that ‘bike-friendly’ label.
I'm seeing a lot more childseats and trailers around town. (And more female cyclists) So, maybe we're heading in the right direction. But we've got a long way to go yet.
That said, there's lots of fun family events on at the Festival of Cycling this weekend.. Let's just hope the families attending don't all drive there with bikes strapped onto their cars...
1 comment:
When I was eight, I lived in Carbondale, Illinois, which required bicycle licences. I didn't have a licence, so whenever I saw a cop, I turned off the road onto the nearest trail and sped away. I liked to imagine the police were chasing me like on "The Dukes of Hazzard." But they probably weren't all that interested.
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