In the Easton area, there are approximately 6,600 children, ages 5 to 14, who are learning their way in the world.  School teaches them math, science and more, but the missing link offered by Bike Smart Easton is the way of the bike.  Bicycles are ridden by children for fun, sport and getting around.  Children, discovering freedom, classically ride in their neighborhoods, to their friends’ houses, navigating the streets, years before they may gain motor vehicle drivers’ licenses.

Data from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control shows that in 2012, bicycling related visits to the emergency room for children ages 5-14 totaled 181,383 visits (5th place).  Interestingly, for ages 15-24, the bicycling related number drops out of the top 10, while motor vehicle related E.R. visits jumps from 77,363 (7th) to 666,833 (4th).  What these numbers show is that young drivers (of bicycles and cars) are active drivers, and also are still developing and at-risk. 

Data from an Easton Hospital report shows that from 2011-2013, bicycling-related E.R visits for children ages 1-18 averaged 56 per year, of which 15 were head-related and potentially preventable with helmet use.

Riding a bike on the street can be the first experience a child can have learning to be a part of traffic flow.  Even on a quiet residential street in front of one’s house, critical traffic concepts present themselves:  Does the child’s awareness remind them to look and yield when pulling out of a driveway?  Do they ride on the correct side of the street?  Do they stop at stop signs? For each child, answers to the questions above are lessons learned at a personal pace.  Pedaling, scanning road surface, reading signs and judging traffic flow takes mental aptitude to multitask (which typically develops around age 10), practice in safe environment and reinforcement by parents, teachers, police officers, bike shops and certified cycling instructors. Bike Smart Easton offers a fun, hands-on, feet on the pedals approach for young drivers to firstly respect and maintain safe equipment  (wearing helmets on mechanically sound bicycles).  Parental/community involvement is key to check over a young child’s helmet and bike regularly, as entropy of wear and tear is rampant. In the program, children develop their balance and basic bike control (~ages 3 to 7), then to hone their bike handling skills (~ages 5 to 10) and finally to understand and practice riding on streets with supervision (~ages 10 to adult).  Each step of the process is crucial, and it is the goal of the Bike Smart Easton program to deliver a concise and age/level-specific program that reinforces and challenges children to grow. The hope for encouraging smart bicycle riding amongst children is to not only avoid E.R. visits, but to create a ripple effect, by which children with supervision can be better bicycle drivers and grow up to be better drivers, be it on bikes or in cars.  Since the rules of the road are essentially the same for bicycles and cars, children who learn at age 10 how to drive their bikes on the street, will be much more adept to drive cars by age 16.  When today’s Bike Smart Easton children grow to be adults, this future generation can be more aware of bicyclists who ride legally.  Perhaps this will be the generation to wipe out the myth that all bicyclists should ride on sidewalks (which is illegal for most).

Through bicycling and other active/fun/sustainable pursuits, there rises a great counter to childhood obesity, mobile source air pollution and parking/traffic congestion.  For children who ride their bicycles, applying their bike smarts, they are just having fun and finding their flow.

Bike Smart Easton is geared for children of the Easton, Pennsylvania (USA) area in grades K-8 (ages 5 to 14).  

Article contributed by Scott Slingerland, cycling instructor and Bike Director for CAT-Coalition for Appropriate Transportation.