Bike Safety

Bike Safety

As children grow they become more and more daring. Though my daughter has not been over the top with her daredevil stunts, there are days when I wonder if she is going to live to see age ten.

-"You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world.But it takes people to make the dream reality."-
Author: Walt Disney

Most parents go through this, and we look back on our childhoods and wonder if we were ever so careless. I think we were, but we never had anyone breathing down our necks. Though I think parents hover over children too much these days, I can understand why it happens. The world is not what it was when we were growing up. One minor thing that we have to worry about is bike safety.

It actually might not be that minor. Bike safety means more than protecting your child if they were to fall off the bike, though that is important. I remember my brother hitting a rock and flying over the front of his bike when he was five years old. He survived, and the only thing we thought about in regards to bike safety was to watch out for traffic.

Earth laughs in flowers.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

We never would have dreamed of wearing helmets and pads, and if we had, our friends would have teased us unmercifully.

Traffic is probably the biggest issues I have with my daughter in regards to bike safety. There was little to no traffic where I grew up, and we would have plenty of warning to pull over when a car was coming. Even then, the speed limit was ten miles and hour and everyone obeyed because of the high concentration of kids in my neighborhood. I do have to worry about that aspect of bike safety with my daughter though, as we live in the middle of town.

Living in town makes bike safety a whole new issue. I do have to make sure she stays far from the street at her age, and I do have to warn her about idiots. I live in a good neighborhood, but there seem to be a lot of dimwits that drive through on a daily basis. Bike safety for us means teaching her to ride the bike first and foremost, and the secondly it will be teaching her to get off of her bike to cross the street, and teaching her how to cross safely. When it comes down to it she might not be doing a lot of bike riding anyway, as it seems there is no safe place to do so. We may have to save the rides for when we visit Grandma.

I think that children have a power to imagine that is almost magical when compared to the adult imagination, and this is something irrevocable that a child loses when he or she becomes bound by logic. We adults continue to have our children’s power of imagination only in our dreams... Of course it’s awfully necessary that children not run their entire lives on the basis of such thinking- they do need to learn how to think logically. But the world will soon teach that to them -and in overabundance. I think we should do everything we can to make it possible for children to hang onto the power to imagine in the almost magical sense for as long as possible.
Author: Joseph Weizenbaum

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