Bike towing a child in a trailer on an A road

[WinniePig]

Driving back from garden centre today on an A road with a 60mph limit, we join a queue of traffic waiting to overtake cyclist towing a trailer. As we pass, I notice a toddler in the trailer...on a busy single carriageway...with a 60mph limit!!! WTAF? How stupid and dangerous. The road is bendy and fast in places. It may be legal but seriously would you risk towing your child in what is practically a tent on wheels?

AIBU or was that an incredibly stupid thing to do?

I think those contraptions are so so dangerous. I don't get why people put their child in danger. It doesn't matter how careful you are, it only takes one mistake from a driver to cause a crash.

Trailers are safer than bike seats. Drivers give them a wide berth and there isn't the risk of a fall from height that there is with a seat. It's safe on an A road as long as drivers remember how to drive. I agree some shouldn't be behind the wheel.

@MilkLady02

I find it bizarre how you have to have a car seat of a particular safety standard, crash tested etc to put a child in a car, yet you can drag a child along a road at car tyre level outside a car with a sheet of canvas between them and a moving vehicle! At any speed that’s a disaster!

This! It really frightens me! What if the trailer detached!

Utter madness

@TitianaTitsling

What if the wheel fell off the car you were driving or a caravan being towed by the car in front of you detached and rolled back at you? There are safety standards for bike trailers you realise right?

And I understand the fear that they are low down and that’s why I don’t use one but so are toddlers walking beside a road and I assume we’re not calling for that to be banned?

The fact that they have “every right to be there” won’t save the child in an accident. It’s irresponsible and ridiculously dangerous. Yanbu.

They are flimsy and gimmicky and I would never use one anywhere where cars or indeed any vehicles are being driven

I’m bemused by all the comments about it’s their right to be on the road, the fact that it’s bad car drivers who would likely be at fault if there was an accident, the lack of cycle paths etc etc.

Yes, all this is true, I agree entirely with all those points. In an ideal world there would be cycle lanes everywhere etc etc. But what use is it to stick doggedly and blindly to an ideological viewpoint when it leads you to put your child in danger?

At a practical/pragmatic level, this is an incredibly dangerous thing to do for the child. What comfort would your principles be to you if your child died, or was seriously injured in a collision with a lorry, while being towed in one of these?

Wouldn’t you rather have been walking or on the bus or in the car? Or to have taken another, quieter, route where you’re not reliant on every driver you encounter being diligent and patient on an NSL road?

Campaign for more cycle routes, I could get behind that. But don’t put your child at risk because you think something ought to be safe. Only do things that actually ARE safe in reality.

I actually saw this exact same thing myself about three weeks ago and I thought it looked like a very unnecessary risk

I've been a cyclist for twenty five years and the road the father was on whilst towing the child in the trailer is a road that I don't cycle on because it's fast, busy and not particularly wide

It was the first time I've seen one of those trailers on the road and I hope it's the last