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Kids and Parents biking on Slow Streets in Oakland

Neighborhood Bike Parades That Help Kids Learn to Ride Together

The kids bike parade is a way to let kids play, ride bikes together and learn to ride safely.  Children and adults make new friends and build community by bike. How did the bike parade start? Earlier on in the pandemic, we learned that COVID spread mostly through poorly-ventilated air. We tried to think of ways to still foster social interactions between children with a lower risk profile.  Our family and a lot of others have gone with their kids biking to spend time outdoors.   We started by turning a birthday party into a evening bike ride.  Kids had fun biking together and being able to see each other not on a computer screen! Parents got a chance to ride with their kids and others. Neighbors were treated to a lively mini parade.   A few parents loved the […]

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Bridge bike ride

Bicycle infrastructure and riding with children

If you’ve been riding your bike for a while, you’ve probably heard some variant of “Get off the road!” coming from an irate driver more than a few times.  (There are a lot of links out there that try to answer the question, “Why do people shout at cyclists?”) Though it can be at best unpleasant to hear, I do wish that it was easier to ride on a dedicated path that’s not shared by automobiles.  Reducing the idea of bicycling to solely a recreational activity has made it harder for people to safely ride as a mode of transportation.  And without a network of routes to reach areas where people can ride bikes for recreation, people often need to put their bikes in or on their cars, and drive to a destination.  I think that many people want to […]

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13 Investigates: Millions of vehicles have unexpected, dangerous front blind zone | wthr.com

Are cars and trucks too tall? A quick note on rider visibility

It’s often hard to ride a bike safely as an adult when roads must be shared with automobiles. According to the NHTSA, the 2nd leading related factor for fatalities in bike/car crashes (in the USA) is “Not visible”. It makes sense that visibility is a leading factor. I don’t think I view the data as a whole as completely reliable, since I’d assume that in most of these cases the victim wasn’t around to tell their side of the story. Kids are less visible on bikes than adults and cars are getting bigger As a kid, it’s even more difficult to be visible. Children can ride erratically.  They are shorter, their bikes are shorter, and thus they are less visible to drivers.  The opposite is true for automobiles.  Vehicles are getting larger, which creates a bigger “blind zone” in front […]

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