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Bike to school safely
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Anonymous user Thu Oct 26, 2006 14:39:36 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Every kid knows that it's more fun to ride a bike than sit on the bus or ride to school in their parents’ car.
Besides riding for fun, riding to school is good for the air, good for one's health and helps with the fight against child obesity.
Choosing a safe bicycle route to school is different from choosing a safe walking route --- bicyclists and pedestrians have different needs for maximum safety. The higher speed of bicyclists increases the need for visibility, smooth surfaces and predictable interaction with other road users.
Note also that bicycle skills vary among students more than walking skills do, and they are usually acquired at a later age. Younger children have less skill at estimating closing speed for automobiles and have less ability to process peripheral vision. Younger children should therefore cycle mainly on less complicated streets, where they can focus on one hazard at a time. Older students will cycle faster, and so they need to have longer sight lines. Routes suitable for a high school student may be unsuitable for elementary school students, and vice versa.
When choosing safe bicycle routes to school, look for:
• The safest, most direct route. Detours to avoid hazards should not add significantly to the length of the ride, or they will be ignored.
• On-street routes. Children riding on the sidewalk have an increased risk of collision with an automobile 2.5 times over riding on the street. Riding a bicycle on sidewalks is prohibited in most jurisdictions in California, at least in business districts.
Use off-street routes only when they have no intersections with streets or driveways, or when they provide a substantial short cut. The faster the cyclists, the more important it is to avoid sidewalks.
Bicyclists should ride on the right side of the street with traffic for maximum safety (wrong way sidewalk riding has the highest risk). When the road is so narrow and so busy that young cyclists cannot ride on it safely, they should walk their bikes on the sidewalk. 
• Adequate width of curb lane and good maintenance of road edge. For safe sharing of the curb lane by motorists and cyclists, it should be at least 14 feet wide, with no on-street parking. Wider is better, particularly for younger cyclists who cannot hold as straight a line. Broken pavement and accumulated debris on the side of the road can narrow the effective width substantially. If there is a bike lane, its width can be added to the rightmost travel lane to determine if width is adequate. On very quiet residential roads with low traffic speeds and good sightlines, even young children can safely take a lane, and wide curb lanes are not needed.
Also watch out for drain grates, potholes, obstructed visibility, dogs off-leash, and other obvious hazards. It is best to scout out the routes by bicycle and consult with bicyclists who regularly cycle in the area.
• Right turns, not left turns. It is much easier for a cyclist (particularly a beginning cyclist) to turn right than to turn left. This means that the best route away from school may differ from the best route to school.
There are two ways to do left-turns safely: merging into the left-turn lane or crossing, stopping, turning the bike in place, and crossing again. The merge-left technique can be learned by students as young as 9 or 10 years old (later for multi-lane streets), but younger students should use the cross-stop and turn-cross technique.
When left-turns are necessary, it is best if they can be done from low-traffic streets onto low-traffic streets, with all-way stops or traffic signals. T-intersections make left turns a bit easier, since there are fewer directions of traffic to watch out for.
Avoid right-turn only lanes where cyclists go straight. Right-turn-only lanes require cyclists to merge across a lane of traffic to continue straight. This skill can be learned by middle-school students, but only with proper bicycle instruction.
Where right-turn-only lanes are unavoidable, younger cyclists should probably be directed to walk their bikes on the sidewalk.
• Few stop signs. Bicycles require significant extra effort to restart after a stop, tempting students to run through stop signs illegally. It is safer for them to ride on a slightly busier street with fewer stops and the protection of having the right of way, than to risk running stop signs. (The AAA guidelines suggest maximizing the number of stop signs, which marks their advice as intended for pedestrians, but not for bicyclists.)
• Only stoplights that sense bicyclists and give sufficient green time. For a bicyclists to use intersections with stoplights safely, the stop light should detect the bike and make sure there is enough green time for the cyclist to clear the intersection. Stop lights that do no meet this standard should have their sensors adjusted and be retimed. Younger children may need to dismount and become pedestrians, using the pedestrian pushbutton and walking their bikes in the crosswalk.
• Avoid commercial driveways. The turning traffic at commercial driveways is a serious hazard to bicyclists (even more so if they are on the sidewalk).
• Low traffic volume and low speeds. Although this criterion is often the first one people think of, it is actually the least important---most accidents involve turning traffic, not passing traffic. A street with few intersections or commercial driveways is safer, even if traffic volume and speed is higher.
If you have any questions on choosing a safe route for your child, please contact Bike Bakersfield at: info@bikebakersfield.org, or call the office at 321-9247. 
A great book on bicycle safety for young kids (ages 10 and under) is titled, “I'm Safe” from the “I'm Safe” series by Wendy and Paul Gordon. The book sells for about $7. This is a great resource for any child who is going to be riding their bike on the road.
Bike Bakersfield is also hosting Bike Rodeos around Bakersfield. The goal of the Bike Rodeo is to instruct children how to properly ride a bike, teach them the rules of the road, how to properly fit a helmet, teach basic bike skills, and more. If you are interested in having a bike rodeo at your school, church, or public event, contact me at 321-9247, or e-mail: LFranconi@BikeBakersfield.org

— Lauren Franconi is the executive director of Bike Bakersfield.

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