Catholic kids riding bikes

In My Humble Opinion
21

Okay, I posted earlier but I guess something went wrong.

I probably shouldn’t have identified them as Catholic. The fact is that I don’t see the public school kids riding their bikes this way. I see them in helmets and on the sidewalks. That is not to say that none of them ride carelessly, however. I have to drive towards the parochial school on my way to work, and it happens to be the same time the kids are going there, so I notice them more. Every time it happens I wonder if I should write a letter or something, or just mind my own business.

Interesting about this community and surrounding communities: The public schools (elementary) start about an hour earlier. Then the same buses from the public schools go around and pick up the parochial school kids. I guess they do it the same in the surrounding communities, because their buses bring those kids into this school as well.

Hey, maybe it’s the fact that it is a school of 1st through 8th grades, so therefore more kids. In this town the one school has K-2, one has 3-4 and the middle school has 5-8. So maybe there are just more kids going in one direction at one time towards the Catholic school so it seemed to me that they didn’t “keep themselves safe.”

Sorry this has gotten boring…

22

I agree with contacting the Principal and voicing your concerns. Chances are the principal is so busy in the office he or she doesn’t get out and see what the children are doing. A little heads up might be highly appreciated.

23

Well I can’t back it up with cites, but form personal experience I would tend to dissagree with you.
The time I caught a pedal on my mountain bike off over the bars and impacted a tree with the top of my helmet. No injuries, but a broken helmet (which I might add Bell Helmets replaced for a very nomial fee! Way to go Bell). Would I have been injured w/o a helmet? I have no idea, but I can tell you I was uninjured with one.
My daughter was rollerblading (wearing a helmet) on the sidewalk. A seed pod from a tree jammed under her wheel and she did a face plant into a concrete block wall. Damage? One broken helmet, I chipped baby tooth. I never so happy, in my life, to spend money as I was when I got to buy her a replacement helmet. Again I cannot prove the effectiveness of the helmet, but at the very least I saved a trip or 5 to the plastic surgeon, if not a brain surgeon.

My pet peeve is people who must think that wearing a bike helmet makes them Jewish. So they wear the helmut like a Yarmulke over the back of their head, leaving their forehead uncovered, and unprotected. Not much protection if they do a face plant.

24

Rick, if your helmet was broken, then I think there’s a very good chance that your skull would have been broken in its absence.

25

Jeeze

Its amazing how many people think they would have been horribly injures if they didn’t :
wear their bike helmet
Wear their knee pads
wear all that safety equipment
wear their seatbelts

I lived on my bike when I was a kid.
I was quite the daredevil.
I once hit a chuck hole and went over the handle bars and landed on my face.
They called me “Scabby” at school but the end result Not even a scar.

I once hit the monkey bars at the park while racing down a hill. End result couldn’t get my breath
and bent the fork on my bike.

When driving my truck past a school when kids are around I just am very careful.
You can’t and won’t get them to bide by your rules.
The fact that you have to “Put up with the kids” is your own problem.
Move.

26

Ah is this a whoosh? :confused:

27

Rick - You said you didn’t know if you woulda been injured, some think the answer is “yes”. :wink:

And, if trading anecdotes is what passes for SD these days, I could have ended up unconcious for a while on an unpopular foot-bridge in the middle of the night had I not been wearing my helmet back from the night shift that one time.

Take every argument for wearing seat-belts (mandatory in my province), and I apply them to cycling helmets.

28

Lucky you.

I used to think requiring helmets was kind of silly.

Then I got involved in a lawsuit, the subject of which is a boy who fell off his bike and hit his head. He wasn’t doing anything too unusual–just riding down a hill and he hit a bump. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and his parents didn’t require it.

Even after brain surgery, he’s got permanent brain damage. Not only did it leave him almost totally unable to attend school, but he’s also in near-constant pain.

Some kids get off lucky. I never wore a helmet as a kid either. Just because we’re not brain damaged doesn’t mean it’s not reasonable and prudent to require helmets.

If you think that simply being very careful and driving slow eliminates the danger, you’re very wrong.

My parents live in a neighborhood where kids ride their bikes all over the streets all the time. My dad is incredibly paranoid about this and crawls past them at about five miles per hour.

A couple of times a year, some kid who’s paying absolutely no attention will swerve right out in front of his truck as he’s creeping past.

Luckily, he’s always been able to hit the brakes in time.

Teaching kids the basics of bike safety and requiring helmets is not a waste of time. Sure, kids won’t become perfect riders, but it will help make them more aware of their responsibilities on the road and the dangers they might encounter.

I find your cavalier attitude disturbing. Furthermore, the idea that kids can’t and won’t learn basic safety is seriously exaggerated. I used to volunteer to help teach the bike safety classes that the local police department gave in the summers. The kids took it pretty seriously, as did I when I was a kid.

Adults taking care and trying to help kids be careful are not mutually exclusive goals. It doesn’t take much effort to achieve both.

29

Cavalier attitude Huh. Golly I’m gonna have to look that one up.
Lillith seems to think that once the principal gives thost kids a good talking to she will be able to drive around her
neighborhood and not worry about some kid darting across in front of her.
Thats a dangerous attitude.
The fact that the kids are all around keeps her careful.
Thanks Lillith.
Please don’t lose that feeling of dread.
Its when we think that everything is hunky dory we loose the feeling that we need to be more cautious.
Those kids have the attention span of ,well a kid. One bright idea could be all it takes for some kid to come
flying across the street in front of you.
BTW in many places its against the law for bicycles to be ridden on the sidewalk.

30

Rick, you said, “Again I cannot prove the effectiveness of the helmet, but at the very least I saved a trip or 5 to the plastic surgeon, if not a brain surgeon.”

I was pointing out that if your helmet was broken, it’s a safe bet that this fall would have broken your skull as well. In other words, it’s safe to say that you would have required more than just a plastic surgeon.

31

Nowhere did Lillith Fair say such a thing.

What she said is that the kids should exercise caution and safety. She did not say that this would grant her free license to drive without concern or worry.

Accidents will happen, even when people exercise due diligence. A helmet won’t prevent these accidents, but it can reduce the amount of damage that will result.

32

You know, I get kind of scared to post on SD because someone always basically tells me I’m an idiot. I guess I’m too thin-skinned.

Yesterday I was heading off to work and damn!!! I forgot and it was that time again!! I took another route. No school today. I love that!

Of course I will always be careful, especially when kids are around. And, in this town people are encouraged to ride their bikes on the sidewalks, a rule my husband and I regularly break because you definintely don’t want two people and a tandem coming at you at 18 mph. We have even been pulled over by the police in the neighboring community and told to get on the sidewalk, which we do exactly until the police car disappears.

I regret that I have said anything anti-Catholic and hope I haven’t offended anyone about that. I am truly concerned about the children. I am sure their parents have no idea that this is happening.

I wish I could show you all the picture of my husband and daughter on the tandem (his dream has been for her to get tall enough and it has finally happened) with our Jack Russell Terrier in a special doggie backpack. It is so cute!! She loves to go anywhere, biking, canoeing, kayaking, etc. Yes, in addition to the SEVEN bicycles in my garage, I have a canoe and TWO KAYAKS!!! What did I do to deserve this?

Well, I digress…

33

Helmets… hmmm…

Yeah, I grew up without wearing a bike helmet and survived. I do, however, bear road-rash scars on my arm from one nasty crash - guess I’m lucky I landed on my arms and not my face or skull.

I’ve been know to ride horses without a helmet, too - but I was glad I was wearing one when I was bucked off one day, landed on my back, skidded across a paddock, and came to a halt by crashing headfirst into the side of a barn.

I’ve had a concussion. It’s not fun. I plan to avoid having another, even if it’s “not serious”.

When I ride my bike on the road I wear a helmet. Why? Because no matter how good or how careful a rider you are, you can still hit a bump, a slick spot, or otherwise just plain fall off your bike and I’d feel really really stupid sitting in the rehab facility, drooling into my lap and waiting for the nurses’ aides to change my diapers because I fell off my bike and cracked my skull open on some random rock or tree stump. Does that mean I would never ride without a helmet? Well… no. But certainly where the chances of accident or injury are higher - like on a road I share with other vehicles, many much larger and faster than me, it’s sort of silly to forgo such a simple thing.

Maybe it was working for someone who had fallen off a bike 20 years ago and suffered a brain injury that rendered her completely deaf for the rest of her life. It would be a real bummer to lose out on the last 20 years of new music just because I fell off my bike, wouldn’t it?

Yeah, I’ve always worn a seat belt in the car, too. Maybe I’m just a nervous nellie, completely risk adverse, and never do anything too exciting or dangerous.

Of course, that would make it hard to explain my passion for flying experimental and homebuilt airplanes, wouldn’t it…?

34

I wouldn’t really count on that. At a birthday party for a friend his girl friend gave him a 60 dollar fancy schmancy lightweight bike helmet. During the party It got knocked off a table fell about three feet on the the tile floor and cracked in half. Considering the helmet only weighed around a pound or so I doubt the force of the impact on the floor would have even been enough to hurt at let let alone injure or crack the skull. Those things are designed to break at the slightest impact. They claim it’s to start absorbing the impact at a low level. I think it’s to make people buy lots of helmets.

35

Oh and by the way here is an interesting site that questions the value of helmets at all, and suggests that helmets laws do more to lower the number of cyclists, than the number of cycling head injuries. Which a little counter productive in the effort to promote execrcise and lower car usage.

http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/hfaq.html

I really don’t know much about the subject, but it appears well cited and researched to me, Just food for thought.

36

The “bike Nazi” crap ends here. This isn’t the BBQ Pit, folks.

Re: The Title. It’s only slightly misleading, and disturbingly interesting in a junior “Nuns On Motorcycles” sort of way, so I’m letting it stay. :slight_smile:

37

If the principal is interested, suggest contacting National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). They do a lot with bicycle safety. There’s a good chance your state has someone who goes to schools and gives bike safety programs. They will usually go to private schools just as readily as public schools.

38

Well, now I’m confused, Lil. I thought our town encouraged everyone to ride in the street. Maybe that was years ago, but I distinctly remember wondering why they would want kids to ride in the street. And there’s that bike lane on my old street.

I think you were wrong about this thread…it’s a great discussion. And I never wore a helmet in my youth, and never, ever remember hearing about anyone getting killed or brain-damaged…one broken leg. We didn’t lose any kids in my school from bike accidents. Nowadays, you hear all these horrible stories. Maybe it’s because there is just so much more traffic.

Call the principal…

39

Just out of curiosity, who was getting sued? I didn’t see anything in your description that should allow parents to sue anyone unless it was about the bump in the road and that would be really pushing the limits on a lawsuit IMO.

40

Feel free to write a letter to the principal if you wish, lilith, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t do a bit of good. If every school I ever attended and my mother’s school system are any indication, these kids have already had safety lectures out the yin-yang. Bicycle safety, schoolbus safety (complete with trips out to the buses to practice crossing the street safely near a bus and evacuation procedures), fire safety, stranger safety, tornado safety, and on occasion, earthquake safety. We had all these lectures at the beginning of every single school year, as well as covering most of this stuff in health class through the year.

You know what? A lot of us still did all the stupid stuff mentioned in the OP. Most us had enough sense to not do that stuff near cars, but it was still stuff that would be considered unsafe cycling. More lectures would have just made us roll our eyes and devise new ways to subtly torture one another for the length of the assembly before rushing outside to continue business as usual. Most of us already knew the rules for bike safety, we just chose to ignore them.

My point is that the school can’t control the choices these kids make. A teacher can present information over and over and over again but ultimately has no control over whether or not that information is actually learned or over the decisions made using that information. And, frankly, I doubt the school has the staffing or authority to supply bike guards to make sure these kids are following the rules even for a few blocks around the school.

You might try talking to the PTA or similar organization about it, though. They might be able to organize a group of volunteers to watch the kids for unsafe behavior. Or enough parents might go home and raise holy hell with their kids to take care of a lot of the problem. Still, you shouldn’t be shocked and amazed if nothing changes.

Of course, even if this problem gets better, it’s always wise to assume that anybody else on the road is going to do something stupid, unpredictable, and dangerous at any point. That way, you’re prepared when they do something stupid, unpredictable, and dangerous, and pleasantly surprised when they don’t.