UKC

Got me thinking: 10 year old spinning around corners on bikes in the middle of the road.

The road is a place trucks, cars etc. routinely use. Its a complicated, fast moving & dangerous environment. Is there a case to have a minimum age limit for someone taking a 'vehicle' onto a carriageway? Cars have a min age, why not bikes? The roads are a lot busier than the days of kids playing hook & stick or whatever.

The worse cyclists I've seen are packs of young kids on rusty 'bmx' type bikes careering over footpaths, across roads & junctions (through traffic lights of whatever colour) and weaving on & off the footpath. No helmets, no road sense, no lights etc. Maybe should only be legal for under 16s if accompanied by a responsible adult??

In reply to Flinticus:

Yea lets just keep making more and more rules. Lets keep on stopping kids from discovering things.

In reply to Flinticus:

No.
A thousand times no.

Btw: The OP on that thread was criticised for reversing a van out onto the carriageway (as opposed to reversing it in and driving out) and defended that decision on the grounds that it's a quiet residential street.
ie: The kind of place where kids need to play, and drivers need to drive accordingly.

In reply to Flinticus:

You could argue that the middle of the road was the right place for them to be - most visible. If they were tucked in to the kerb, maybe the reversing driver might not have seen them?

Why on earth would you suggest stopping kids from getting about independently, in an environmentally friendly manner? I think the cars are the problem, not the kids on bikes - lets ban adults from charging down roads in a tonne of metal!

In reply to Flinticus:

No.
The rules we have are not enforced.
Texting, Phoning, eating, Drinking hot drinks, reversing into carriageway, hogging middle lane, speeding, driving too close, having sex, etcetera whilst driving are not enforced or really enforceable so why another, rule. Really we only need one rule, "Don`t be a selfish knob".

In reply to Flinticus:

Nooooooooooo way!

For me as a kid my bike was my first taste of freedom, genuine danger and serious pain when things went wrong. All things (I think) need to be experienced early on to learn us some common sense! I do think it's worth drilling road safety into kids at the first opportunity though.

In reply to Flinticus:

You can make all the rules you like. Kids will still cycle around in packs on bmx type bikes, careering over footpaths, across roads & junctions (through traffic lights of whatever colour) and weaving on & off the footpath. No helmets, no road sense, no lights etc.

It is what they do. It is what we did when we were kids. The only think that has changed is that the internet now provides a forum for folks like you to publicly bitch about it.

In reply to Flinticus:
Investment in cycle paths etc can't hurt though.
As peppermill said, education should be key, remember lots in school about green cross code etc, but we had one evening for our cycling proficiency test, no previous lessons on cycling road safety, or follow up lessons, possibly done better in other places though.

In reply to Flinticus:

I think children should be banned, period.

Yours,

V. Meldrew

In reply to Andy Morley:

I had the misfortune to have to go to the supermarket today, and had exactly this thought!
Blooming school holidays - they must be over soon?!

In reply to girlymonkey:
Well, I'd all be in favour of separate cycle lanes, priority at lights and quiet zones / places where kids and families get priority on the street, the old 'reclaim the streets' vibe, especially residential areas. More cul-de-sacs, less throughways etc.

While cars are necessary to our way of life, it would be great if planning wasn't always centred around them. Despite all the benefits of cycling I still see new roads or road amendments going up that take little or no account of a cyclist's needs

In reply to ByEek:


Looking back to when you were a kid, traffic on the roads has doubled.

And I was raising a topic of discussion, not bitching. Seems the internet is a place for folks like you to start ramping up the temp on any thread.

In reply to girlymonkey:

Wretched people, they will go and dabble in the immorality of various kind, and then they are surprised when pregnancy results. And, what is worse, is they expect the rest of us to participate in the pain that they experience by asking us to go to inordinate length to avoid running over their horrid offspring.
I don't belieeeeve it!

In reply to Flinticus:


So why punish the kids for that? Why not look at how we can cut down on traffic?

In reply to girlymonkey:

If we were to cut down on churning out sprogs we would ultimately cut down on traffic.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

absolutely. I am resolutely sprog free. We may adopt at some point in the future, but definitely anti sprog production. Our over populated planet would benefit in many ways from sprog reduction

In reply to girlymonkey:


'Spare the rod and spoil the child'. Punishment is good for them.

In reply to Flinticus:
Why what's wrong with the middle of the road. If it's the middle it means the White line which still means they are on the correct side of the road. People in cars are in the middle of the road all the time. Don't see anyone complaining about that.

In reply to eltankos:
There is a downside of that. The MK Redways are great - kids can roam wide and free with no danger from big roads, only the odd residential street or car park to cross. But because they don't have to deal with proper, dangerous roads, MK kids have no road sense whatsoever, which doesn't necessarily bode well for later life (or indeed lasting that long if they encounter proper dangerous roads elsewhere).

In reply to Andy Morley:

Punishment which specifically relates to the actions of that child may be justified. Collective punishment in my view never works, and that's what this would be.

Personally I would be more in favour of home zones for quiet residential streets of the kind discussed in the article - absolute priority for pedestrians and cyclists, cars to move at walking pace, kids playing out properly. I live in a 1970s estate where the houses front onto a footpath/cycle path rather than a road, and it is good to see old-style playing in the street that seems to have died in many other places - but how about we reclaim the actual street for it as well?

In reply to Flinticus:


This, of course, is a problem caused by the lack of front-line policing. If a policeman was there to see it, take them home and give them a good ticking off in front of their parents, things might improve. But on the ground enforcement has near enough disappeared in most places.

Helmets, by the way, are not a legal requirement (using the road correctly and lights at night are).

In reply to Neil Williams:


Punishment is good for the soul. It gives you moral fibre. You don't need to deserve it in order to enjoy the benefits.