Think of your first bicycle, and how you learned to ride: the trepidation, the accomplishment, and the occasional skinned knee--later perhaps independence, joy, and the wind in your hair.
What about traffic laws, the "rules of the road", who has the right of way? Most of us learned these things from inside a car, and only in relation to other motor vehicles. Looking at our experience, it's no surprise that many of us have misconceptions about how to ride bicycles.
After hearing of a tragic collision between a car and a bicycle, a friend read up on bicycle safety. He reported back: "Almost everything I know about how to ride a bicycle is wrong."
He is not alone. That we know how to ride bikes does not mean that we know how to operate bicycles safely and effectively. A little education would go a long way, but most people never get that education.
Don't Wait -- Educate Yourself -- Start Now
Bicycling Street Smarts, by John S. Allen, is a good place to learn the fundamentals of safe, legal, and confident riding. The online edition is FREE and the print edition is $5.
Here are some best practices to start with, and links for further reading:
- Have control of your bike.
- Ride on the road.
- Know and follow the rules.
- Integrate in the intersections.
- There's more than one way to turn left.
- Protect your space in the lane.
- Understand the limitations of bike lanes.
- Learn emergency maneuvers.
- Let it go: don't escalate harassment.
The League of American Bicyclists (The League), a non-profit membership organization, promotes bicycling and bicycle education throughout the US. The League has developed a nationally recognized curriculum called BikeED, and certifies bicycle educators to teach it effectively in a variety of settings. It addresses a variety of user groups with appropriate subject matter. You can find a class near you here.
BikeED's pedestrian and bicycle safety lessons could easily be incorporated as a required part of elementary schools' curricula. Don't we owe it to our children to teach them how to identify unsafe conditions, and how to be safe while walking or riding bikes in their neighborhoods and elsewhere? Many Americans have taken or will take driver's ed in high school. Don't you think that a new teenage driver who has already learned to look critically at traffic conditions as a bicyclist or pedestrian will be a safer driver than one who hasn't?
If you haven't done it already, consider getting some bicycle education as soon as possible. Even experienced bicyclists routinely find BikeED courses to be eye-openning (I certainly did). Again, to find a local class, hit The League's Online Database.
