Very young children scooting by busy roads?

DS has always scooted/rode his bike along since about 3yo. He will stop and knows that he has to stop with a good 5 feet of the road. Road sense is something that has been drilled into him as a city kid over and over and over again. Not come close, not even once. To be fair though I move pretty quick so he is rarely move than a couple of steps ahead of me (this is the reason he is allowed wheels, so he can keep up).

If there are lots of pedestrians about I carry the scooter.

All those risks are the same if they are running or skipping though. Or don't you let your children walk at all?

My children do fall off their scooters but from that they have learned to be more careful. Experience is the best way for them to learn, as someone else said, you can't protect them from all the possible risks.

But what if they hit a broken paving stone and veer into the road , what if they are distracted and don't stop at a junction. Too many what ifs?

My children scoot to school and nursery (they are 4 and 2yo). They zoom ahead of me and I can't always catch them up, but they ALWAYS stop at the kerb and wait for me, and know when I tell them to stop or to go steady, that I mean it.

I would rather give them the freedom to learn the dangers this way than keep them on reins or strapped into the buggy - at least they are getting some valuable exercise!

Only the parents know what their child is capable of and how trustworthy they are out and about, so I think you should mind your own business.

YANBU. You can't control all risks and you shouldn't try to, but to me this seems too great a risk with potential outcomes that are too serious. I live in centralish London, there's a huge amount of traffic, and yet the pavements are covered with 2 and 3yos pelting along, their mothers a good 20m behind. Too dangerous and also pretty antisocial.

smooth crim - you allow them to go far away in park and out of sight and it doesn't pose a definate threat. This is what i mean by all parents draw their own lines based on past experience and knowledge of their own kids. Although, i personally couldn't allow what you allow yet, i don't think you are wrong for doing it. There is a possible threat in allowing them out of sight and there is a possible threat in allowing to scoot beside road but there's a possible threat in so many things (Most accidents actually happen in the home) and we each do the best we can in making our own judgements.

DS is 3 and he scoots in front of me. We've worked very hard to ensure that he understands the rules - that he never goes round a corner so I can always see him, that he scoots away from the kerb (he's very hot on this and tells me off if I inadvertently walk on the inside of him), he stops at all roads and on the really steep hill that we walk down he has little milestones where he waits for me (post box, big hedge etc). I'm really keen that he learns road sense and I think he gets this by lots of repetition and by being trusted to do the right thing. I'm proud to say I totally trust him to follow these rules as he's proved to me that I can .

We lived on a very, very busy road and walked everywhere (ime it's the dcs who are driven everywhere that lack roadsense).
I watched my scarily road-aware 4yo run straight across a side road without a glance. He couldn't hear me call out to him to stop. He'd never done it before and has never done it since. Nowt happened but it was a real wake-up call - basically below a certain age dcs are just too easily distracted to travel alongside roads on foot (or bike, or scooter) without being in very close proximity to an adult.
There are plenty of safer areas for them to roam free and be shown how much you trust them, imo.

I agree that the balance is hard.
But at least we are worried about it. IMO trying to find the balance, is better than either not caring about risk (and letting our kids scoot/cycle out of control) or trying to avoid any (immediate) risk by strapping them in an unnecessary buggy.

(sorry I'm the OP - SmoothCriminal was a misjudged namechange - now I've got my xmas clothes on hehe)

Gosh Hassled wat a fright! i'm glad he is okay.

One of myearlest memories is my best friend being hit by a car as she ran across the road to an icecream van. We were 5. She still suffers with vision problems now.

Maybe that has made me more protective but why not?

I'm hardly going to be trailing them to Comprehensive school telling them to wait for the green man.

NKffff is right - as parents we're constantly making risk assessments and it's exhausting. I've seen plenty of small kids screech around corners or stop perilously close to the pavement, and it scares the wits out of me. And I HATE the children who scoot up behind pedestrians apparently out of nowhere - it's as bad as cyclists on the pavement IMO.

My oldest DC was hit by a car when he was 4 - he just let go of my hand and went ahead of me across the road. He's alive and well today (it was pretty bad at the time) but because of that I'm hyper-neurotic when it comes to road safety. Trying to get the balance between road safety and "we're all going to DIE!!!" is hard.

Muddleduck - you are right in saying that you cannot eliminate all risk, but it can be a measured risk.
My 3 yo DD walks to preschool and back everyday with me. I have a buggy to push as well, and we walk down a steep hill with no pavements, around 2 blind corners. She walks brilliantly cos she knows she has to, and even swaps sides unasked on the way, so that she is never on the traffic side of me. She never runs off, and walks carefully. She knows to hold on to the pushchair by busy roads.
However, I wouldn't let her run 20 feet in front of me towards traffic, and trust that she would stop. Cos sometimes she gets a bit carried away cos she sees someone she knows, or trips over.

Madsometimes...
Is it at all possible that if you had allowed your dd to start going on pavements on her bike when she was younger (and slower) then by the time she was 4 she might have known what to do?

YANBU. I find it bizarre, tbh.

Even with the best road sense in the world, the risk of falling off into the road is too great.

No YANBU. I allowed my dd2 to like-a-bike to school once when she was four. Fortunately, we made the return journey in one piece, but it was terrifying and I have never repeated it.

I occassionally allow her to go on a scooter because she is now 6, and because she cannot scoot very well. Plus my 9 year old can scoot on ahead and can get to side roads first.

Agree with GM.
There is a bigger picture here about giveing your children the opportunity to show that they can be trusted. I will not put my 2 year old in a buggy that he does not need just to make me feel safer. I give him the freedom to show he can be trusted and he (usually) rises to the challenge. He knows what I mean when I say "safely and carefully" and knows that if he doesn't do it then he will not be allowed to scoot.

IME expeience all the potentially dangerous traffic incidents have been with either children on scooters/bikes where the parents have no control or children who spend their lives in pushchairs who manage to 'escape' but have no sense of what is safe.

smooth crim - i feel like you've seen my 3 y/o out on his scooter cos i do wonder how it looks to people. We're in North London and some of the roads he scoots along can be busy. Because i'm pregnant, i can't always keep up with him. But he never goes out of my sight and he always stops at roads. If he didn't he knows i will take the scooter away but then it only has to happen once doesn't it....

As parents we're constantly having to weigh up - giving them some responsibility and keeping them safe and everyone will draw their own line on this.

YANBU it is scary especially in a place full of traffic, young children cannot be trusted at all, they do not have a good a danger concept as older children or adults.In that situation i would rather be a neurotic mother and have my child safely with me, than 6 ft under ground in extreme cases or ICU. My dd 2.9 still has a buggy as i feel safer when than letting her run all over the pavement and in the road.

I think it's a bigger question, really, isn't it? For almost everything in life, there's a point at which you have to decide whether or not your children are mature enough to do it - and it depends so much on the individual. As one of my colleagues always says, he still can't trust his 13 year old to cycle to school safely on his own, but his 10 year old already has much more road sense. It's the same with little ones on scooters - some can follow the lamppost rules, and some can't yet.

I let ds (4) scoot along to preschool. It does make me nervous tbh. If I let him walk he would whinge the whole way there, so at least we can get to preschool fairly quickly and without me feeling frazzled! He is also good at stopping by roads and lamp posts (when I ask him to!) I think it has increased his road safety awareness, as he is very wary of cars (in a positive way). He will pull right over out of their way and has even saved me from being run over on occasion

YANBU.
I was walking into the city centre shopping area near where I live and there is a big road where all the buses turn to go down to the main bus station. Me and this other lady were waiting one side of the road (for the traffic lights to change), a bus was coming round the other side of the road (its a tight corner) just as a little boy (3 or 4yo) was scooting as fast as he could towards the traffic light crossing. Me and the lady next to me started beckoning to the boy to slow down, and then the lady next to me ended up shouting at the boy to stop, just as he screeched to a stop a few inches from the bus which was taking the corner fast and tight. I actually closed my eyes!!!!

We couldn't see the boys mother nearby, and the boy had started crying cos the lady next to me had frightened him. We were all a bit shaken. Then quite a few seconds later, this boys mother turned up - she must have been WAY behind him, and gave us a really dirty look.

I thought afterwards that maybe the mother just trusted the boy implicitly to stop , but then he stopped SO close to the road that there was no margin for error. He could have easily gone under the bus.

My DD (3.5) is getting a scooter for Xmas but I intend to make her 'scoot' right next to me when we are by main roads, and save the fast scooting for parks!