Tim199

I was wondering what abilities you would look for to be sure that kids could safely ride in a marked bike lane on the road. The specific road in question has a 35 mile an hour speed limit but cars usually go 40 and sometimes 45. Our town has extensive multi use paved bike paths, but in order to get to most of them from our house requires about 1/2 a mile (1 km) in the bike lane on the road I described and then another 1/2 a mile through a neighborhood either on the road or on the sidewalk. The neighborhood road is fairly quiet.

My kids aren't close yet, so I'm really just planning ahead on what to look for or maybe even to work on in the coming years. My kids are riding 20" bikes and can take 6-8 mile bike trips without too much trouble now on bike paths.

ArmChairRider

A bicycle that rides straight might help.
A trail of 68 to 73 was what Mr. Dave Moulton suggested.
Bicycle Trail Calculator | yojimg.net

idiotekniQues

kids that can ride in a straight line. all the kids I run into on the local Greenway are all over the place. makes passing them more dicey than normal riders.

adamhenry

Really?

idiotekniQues

I should have said "Roll Over" since my big 700cc wheels just ride over those little ****ers

memebag

Depends on how much you love the kids, suppose. My parents sent me to school on a bike on a 1 mile length of 35mph two lane road starting at the age of 7. I doubt I would have done the same to my daughter.

Maelochs

Right? When I was seven or eight it was nothing for a friend and I to hop on our bikes on a summer day and ride a few miles to the library, convenience store, ice cream shop, and wherever else, and ride home a few hours later. Anther couple years and we would ride to the local mall---maybe 5 or 7 miles---to buy models at the hobby shop.

Open roads, traffic, the phrase "bike lane" hadn't been invented. Helmets were for motorcyclists and soldiers, and pads were for football players. Back then, no one freaked out if a kid skinned his knee, and parents basically assumed that kids were smart enough to perform the most basic activities without constant coaching.

I'd ride the route myself a few times at different times of the day to get a feel for traffic, then I'd take my kids (well, I don't have kids ... they were all hit by cars while riding bikes) along the route behind me so they could get used to it and learn it and its idiosyncrasies----where the curb ended without a ramp, where there was no shoulder, where there was, etc.

If kids couldn't do basic stuff, most posters here wouldn't exist, because Baby Boomer parents basically turned the kids loose after breakfast, after lunch and after dinner and didn't see them for hours at a time ... and we had all died none of you would be here. And the world is actually a lot safer now---despite the senseless paranoia level being much higher, there are fewer actual threats (helmets, pads ... Bike Lanes!?)

You are sensible to be planning ahead. Treat your kids like they are sensible (for kids) and teach them the route and they will be fine.

Hey, anyone who can ride a giant iguana to work must have some pretty tough kids.

CliffordK

Hmmm...
I've been riding a bit with both my niece (12) and nephew (10). Unfortunately I only get to ride with them for a few hours a year.

Following directions would be a big plus. When I say "ride to the right", I expect them to be within 2 feet of the edge of the road, not just to the right of the yellow median line. As idiotekniQues mentions, the ability to ride in a straight line would help (especially if one is trying to ride on the side of the road).

One needs to learn basic street rules and etiquette. Stop at stop signs & obey traffic rules. Look both ways. Yield for bigger vehicles etc. This also means becoming road savvy. For example, around Mom's house, it is reasonably safe to ride in the middle of the road... EXCEPT around a blind corner where one should be far out of the way. And PREDICTABLE.

I'm not sure about turn signals. Both my niece and nephew like to have both hands on the handlebars. So, perhaps some one-handed riding practice would be handy.

Likewise, looking back and maintaining a straight riding path can take a lifetime to master, but would be a good skill to work on.

f4rrest

Similar here.

I think kids were disposable in the '70s.

No way I'd put my kids in traffic.

Stadjer

I'm happy my parents weren't overprotective, and in my country it wasn't as safe back then as it is now. A lot of risktaking in the 70's was just unnecessary and/or ignorant, but the general attitude had it's advantages and kids have to learn to deal with danger anyway. With as much as I read on this forum about people crashing with no car involved, I wonder whether they shouldn't have learned basic skills like staying on your bike as a kid. I also wonder whether parents who are protective in some way are serving the interest of their child or their own peace of mind.

I'd say to go out in traffic that can be dangerous, they should in full control of their bike, it shouldn't be an issue because they have to learn traffic related skills and needs all of their attention. If they have difficulty riding with one hand, they probably should play more in a safe area, learning to ride with no hands, ride on the back wheel, jump with the bike, stuff like that. Learn the harder things to make just riding a piece of cake. If you can ride without hands riding with one hand and keeping the bike straight while looking behind is easy.

Wilfred Laurier

I was taking my boys for rides on city streets from the ages of about 7 or 8. I would trust my oldest, now 13, to do the same alone, but my younger boy, now 10, I would not be comfortable with it.

Maelochs

No need to wonder. Children who grow up overprotected tend to lack strength, resilience, the ability to overcome difficulty, and other real-world survival skills. Colleges are dealing with it now ... pretty soon the whole nation will be taken over by infantilized, overprotected, weak-willed kids who were never allowed to live.

Kids int he '60s and '70s weren't "disposable' and their parents didn't love them less ... their parents simply realized that kids can handle life, and if you let them they will be quite competent at what are really stupidly simply things like safely riding bicycles and such.

Remember, a lot of the baby-boomer parents were doing serious farm and household jobs as well as going to school and were also probably helping to raise the younger children. We treat children as morons ... and they don't disappoint us. Kids used to be treated as small people, and they did all right at that, too.

Parents feed their sense of self-importance, and project their most irrational fears and inadequacies onto their kids ... and then wonder why their kids are still living at home at age 26. That, my friends, is Parental failure.

Yup. This is how kids used to learn to ride bikes ... in parks, on the street, on the playground with other kids with no adult supervision. And because they were not coddled and treated as incompetent, they did stunts, tried tricks, sometimes fell off, but back then it was alright to fall down----we just got back up. Nowadays even if there are no skinned knees or elbows the kids have to cry, the mother has to get three kinds of bandage and two modes of sterilization, and take the kid home to lie down for the rest of the day. Back in the day, a skinned knee was brushed off, and play resumed.

People can say all the stupid stuff they want, but the actual fact is, kids didn't sustain a lot of injuries beyond scrapes. It was still a pretty big deal if one or two people out of a school of a thousand or two thousand broke a bone and came to school in a cast.

Injuries were not more frequent then ... Fear was less frequent then. Everybody didn't live in a state of irrational panic. Usually society progresses, but in this case it has regressed sharply.

Shoot, I had a paper route by the time I was eight and delivered papers seven days a week, collected money, kept the books, and paid the distributor. Nowadays parents would probably call that torture ... because somehow parents got Really stupid.

Kids could ride in traffic by age 8 because they were not told they couldn't. They were told it was dangerous, and TRAINED to be smart and to deal with it.

Shoot, my sister and I and Every kid in the neighborhood walked a couple miles to elementary school by ourselves from age six---our moms would go with us the first two or three days, and then ... hey, a six-year-old kid Better be able to walk, or better get some medical or psychiatric attention. I mean, walking and avoiding lethal threats is pretty basic ... something we could probably do on instinct alone in most cases.

And again, ... there were no disasters, no kids hit by cars, kidnapped by predators, abducted by aliens ... it was just what every one did and everyone was cool with it. Children are not so "Slowed in mental development" that they cannot walk ... unless they are "Slowed in mental development". Now we treat every kid as if he or she were "Slowed in mental development". [The simple and obnoxious idiocy that one cannot type the word "re- t arded" to describe the "developmentally challenged" shows the kind of sickness which besets us. We have raised a generation of kids which cannot walk to school without an armed guard and a medic, but we have to be careful what words we use? Maybe if we could talk freely about real things we could recognize they need fixing??]

Here's a thought----if your kids can't handle avoiding traffic, maybe you need to start teaching them properly. If you cannot accept that your kids can avoid traffic, maybe you need to start looking long and hard at yourself, and let your kids actually live their lives.

Would be one way of looking at things.

Tim199

Thanks for the input everyone. For the record mine are 5 and they are pretty close to being able to consistently ride in a straight line, but not one handed, that's a good thing to work on. The outbound route is down a pretty good hill and they can stop well enough, but I'll have to work on yielding, stopping for cars, and defensive riding. Maybe training them to ride with cars in our slower neighborhood first.

Personally I want to get the most benefit for my kids out of learning to live life while minimizing the most serious risks. The fact is there were more preventable child deaths and serious life altering injuries in previous decades. The efforts to reduce those probably went overboard into the stay inside your house 24 hrs a day and get diabetes and hypertension by age 8 from being an overeating couch potato that we see now. So I constantly think about how I can get them to learn from their mistakes and get the most learning and fun without unnecessary risk. Definitely not why I started this thread though. Any more input on specific skills to work on or things to look for to know they are ready would be great. Of course I'll go with them every time for a while given their age, but even for them to go with me they need some skills they don't have yet.

rmfnla

Interesting topic.

I get annoyed by people riding on the sidewalk unless they are with kids; it is a bit dicey on the road, even the ones with bike lanes...

ramzilla

Go to the supermarket. Buy the biggest watermelon you can find. Signal to the kids to put it out on the road and tell them to step back onto the sidewalk. Drive your automobile into the watermelon at 45mph. Your kids will get the message.

BlazingPedals

My rule of thumb is about 4th or 5th grade, when they are tall enough to be seen over car hoods. By then they should also be able to understand the rules of the road, and stop at stop signs and lights.

I have a pretty low opinion of bike lanes. People mistakenly think the white line magically protects them from cars, and being isolated they don't need to obey the rules of the road because they are 'something else.' So it inhibits learning how to ride predictably (to cars.) Also, being at the side of the road, they become background clutter to the drivers and tend to not be seen as well, leading to more right hooks and left crosses.

Jean3n16

My 10yr old could do it safely.

My 11 and 8yr old would be the flat watermelon.

Maelochs

I know some groups do "Bike Rodeo " safety shows ... set up courses with cones which force kids to take turns of different radii and stop within certain areas and stuff. You could set up courses for your kids .... a long straight with a tight kink in the middle, a couple "Stop between these lines" sections ... a couple small jumps ... just kidding. But a "wave as you go through this section," first straight and then with a gentle S turn, would be a good and safe challenge.

If you are starting at age five they will be fine. The fact that you are thinking about all this bodes well.

For any cyclist, teaching them to watch for cars coming out of side streets is a big one. Teaching them that even if the driver looks at you and smiles, he might still pull out ... They will be fine.

Fact is even if more kids died in the '60s and '70s (haven't seen reliable figures) it wasn't from walking or riding in my experience. I have been reading for as long as I have been riding and watching the news as well ... if kids were getting run over anywhere around where I lived I would have known.

Seat belts and car seats and not having kids in the back of the pick up probably saved more lives than anything else, as far as stupid avoidable deaths.

pdlamb

Ditto. Kids are ready to ride in a bike lane when they're ready to ride in the street or road the bike lane is painted on, IMHO. Ride a straight line, watch for turning and crossing traffic, slow down and look at stop signs (stopping when necessary!). That white line gives a cyclist a lane, but you're still riding with traffic.

Caliper

Sounds like a practical example. May also be a good litmus test. If they just think it was very cool they may be too young. If they "get it", them time to ride.




I was riding my 20" coaster-braked Huffy bike all over the neighborhood in 4th grade I think (based on the friends I remember riding with). This was in the mid 80's before helicopter-parenting, thank goodness. Although, I was required to wear my helmet. Went all over, explored new places, got lost and was home for dinner. A lot of the riding at this time was on some dedicated bike trails that wound behind the houses in a neighboring subdivision, but there was also a lot of time on the road. Later moved on to road bikes as I grew, but this is the kind of stuff that started my love of cycling.

CliffordK

I agree, no disposable kids..... ever.

Hover-parenting is a new thing.

Kids can fall off their bikes... that is part of learning to bike. And let them climb and jump off of stuff, and learn to roll.

For cycling, teach them the rules of the road, and to be safe. Go out and ride with them some (not just sending them out alone), and then let them explore.

By the time I was in first grade, I think, I was riding my bike the 3 miles or so to school.
By the time I was in 6th grade, I was riding the 20+ miles to the nearest city. Mom & Dad found the safest route possible to follow, but it wasn't without traffic. Speed limit was 55 MPH, and several roads had limited shoulders.
By 7th grade, we moved. 8 miles or so into the city to Jr High, which I did regularly.

Seattle Forrest

Reminds me of that scene from Life of Pi.

caloso

Minimum: Ability to ride a straight line, stop quickly and under control, follow directions, follow traffic rules.

Every kid is different: I have 12 year old twins. One has been riding with me on city streets since age 8; the other was much less comfortable in traffic.

ltxi

Agree...

Hardrock23

My son rides on the roads in our large community park. They dont have side walks. He was 3 his first time doing it, last year. The speed limit in the main park ranges from 5-10 mph and then 15 mph going out to the water. Its quite busy during the summer as it has a pool, every sport field, nature paths, river, playgrounds, etc. but hes done well each time. He will actually stay aware, ride a straight line, and listen to my directions (he rides in front) while on these couple roads, though he wont do these things on the side walk. As he gets older, we'll venture out to other places and the MUPs. He still has alot to learn obviously, being so young still but I dont think its too early to start teaching him....Or any young kid.

Hes an active boy who will not be sitting inside all day every day, so I want him familiar with our area and knowing what to do in certain situations, for when hes older & out. I lived outside on my bike with my friends exploring and having fun nearly everyday, so id like him to do the same if he wants.

Kids so easily soak up information and see/understand more than a lot seem to think.
& Maelochs post #12 - +1