Riding along London’s streets. Photo: Christian Sinibaldi
A few weeks ago, I was driving along a shopping street near my home when the car in front of me stopped. As I overtook, a passenger opened his door, knocking my wing mirror clean off. I’m usually pretty phlegmatic about minor prangs, but this one had me flying from my car, screaming at the top of my voice at a car full of men who were so surprised, or alarmed, that they wound their windows up and pretended it wasn’t happening.
When I got home I wondered why I had flown into such a fury, and realised that it was because this was a stretch of road that my teenage son cycled along four days a week on his way to his east London rowing club.
I’ve always known this particular road is full of motorists doing unpredictable things, and I’ve spent hours pacing the house, waiting for my son to get home, determined not to pass my anxiety on to him by harassing him on his mobile phone. At the back of my mind was the terrible realisation that this was precisely the accident I had been fearing: that if the door had hit a boy on a bike, rather than a wing mirror, we wouldn’t just be looking at broken glass.
My son has been cycling on his own to rowing since he was 13 – a journey of around a mile, which involves one major crossroads and a steep hill down to the river where another rower was seriously injured a few years ago because he was going too fast and was unable to avoid a car which poked suddenly out of a side turn.
The parade of shops would seem to be the least dangerous part of the journey, and yet it is actually the most treacherous, because it is the bit that most relies on the good sense of other people. I can teach my son to obey traffic lights and not to race down hills, but it takes hours of road experience to be able to predict that someone may be going to open their car door on you.
So, am I being irresponsible in allowing my son to make the journey on his own? According to the national cyclists’ organisation CTC, traffic awareness develops around the age of 8-10 years old. It states: “Up until that time, at least, you will need to supervise your child on roads. He or she might be a proficient cyclist and yet make misjudgments about traffic.”
In contrast, research figures released today reveal the most common age at which most parents nowadays allow their children to cycle on the roads is 12 years old (compared with 10 in their own childhoods).
Perhaps more significant is the finding that 81% of all parents won’t allow their children to cycle independently at all. This, the researchers argue, is creating a generation of “cul-de-sac” kids, restricted to cycling circuits of their immediate road or neighbourhood streets – though my own experience, as recounted above, suggests that in some circumstances, these may be the most dangerous of all.
Cycling England, who commissioned the research, want to promote cycle training for children, and I am all for it. But as childhood expert Tim Gill points out, though cycling isn’t as dangerous as some parents think it is, the risks are rather more real than some others that parents are worried about, such as abduction.
In a report commissioned by the National Children’s Bureau a couple of years ago, Gill wrote: “A child who cycles is almost certain to sustain at least slight injuries as a result of the activity, but this is not seen as a reason for prohibiting it.”
He adds: “Cycling has significance for children and young people that adults are prone to forget… It is great fun, it has the potential to expand the territory over which children can get around on their own, it is usually a social activity and it allows for close engagement and interaction with the people, places and objects encountered en route.”
I am relieved that my son is now old enough to be having driving lessons, which I am sure will increase his road awareness as a cyclist. But so far, in four years of making at least eight cycle journeys a week, he has had just one tumble. He was racing around a corner to get home for a football match and caught his pedal on the pavement, sending him flying into the road. I shudder to think what would have happened if a car had been close. But I know it’s one mistake he will never make again.
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