To veto DH taking baby out on push bike?!

[Amidying]

We have a 19 month old son. DH has got it in his head that at some point in the future, he is going to take DS out on his push bike with one of those seats that go on the back of a bike! Now he hasn’t specified what age DS would be but it would be pre-school age by the sound of it. I have said no way will I allow it as it’s not safe. This is not an essential mode of transport either, so I totally understand that for some people there is no choice but to travel this way with their child, but we have 2 cars! This would be to ride a short distance on the road to our local park or beach which is about 10 mins, but I still can’t get onboard with the idea.

I said to him: We have just spent £300 getting the safest car seat we could afford and you want to take him out on a push bike before he can even ride a bike himself?! He reckons I am being the overprotective mother and it will teach him road safety and help him learn how to ride a bike responsibly. I reckon he is insane and we are at a standoff.

His argument is that his dad did it with him when he was little and it’s one of his earliest happy memories, which is all lovely but we have come a long way safety wise since then. When I was a kid people used to smoke next to me, car seats weren’t a thing, my cousins and me used to pile into car with some of us in the footwells! So where does it end? We have to move with the times surely?! I would prefer to teach DS to ride when the time comes and when he reaches the right age he can do a road safety awareness course or something, I dunno. I hadn’t really thought about it because for me it’s way off into the future!

UABU= chill sista, let them ride
UANBU= its insane and unsafe

Pushing a bike with a toddler on the back is not hard. If you are a good cyclist then a crossbar and a back seat is easy (I have a step through, on purpose, because I can't cope with a crossbar but lots of men use crossbars and baby seats).

My toddlers couldn't undo their bike straps (even at the stage where they could undo their car seats!).

Stop worrying yourself into an early grave, and preventing your child from having a variety of experiences.

Don’t come to the Netherlands! DD grew up on the front and back of her dad and grandparents bikes. She learned to ride when she was five and has cycled to and from school since she was 12 (primary school was a three minute walk away).

I learned to ride a bike at 40 years old but never gained the confidence to ride consistently but I see colleagues and friends ride everywhere and I am envious I never grew up with cycling as part of my culture.

@Amidying and @drspouse it’s normally no problem mounting and dismounting with the seat, takes a bit of getting used to, depending on where the seat is mounted. I don’t have the hip flexibility to use a bike with a crossbar so always have a step through which is even easier (although does mean crossbar mounted seats wouldn’t work for me). However I did stop cycling with my child when I found his weight on the back of the bike affected my ability to balance the bike when dismounting.

On the junction if your DH rides defensively in the centre of the carriageway and indicates right for that stretch he probably won’t have a problem, depending on the speed, visibility and busy-ness of oncoming traffic. I have a right turn to pull into my road and I pull out from left, well into the carriageway and then over to the right so cars can pass me on the left whilst I wait for a gap. Straight wide road, no visibility obstructions. It’s a 30mph road but not an accident hotspot, I would have done this - and did- with DS on the back. Whereas there’s another right turn we regularly did where you had to cross over into a right hand lane and that was negotiating two lanes of traffic just before a 4 way junction in a very busy high st, with parked cars, deliveries etc, which I didn’t do with him, I just hopped up in the pavement at the signalled crossing and used the pedestrian lights to cross over, which I judged much safer. It’s very contextual.

Hopefully not cyclists with baby seats attached - my friend said she noticed a big improvement in cars behaviour when she attached a child seat to her bike

My oh has taken both our boys out age 1-4. They will be too heavy after that and can ride themselves. He won’t use a trailer (except st centre parcs) as he feels too dangerous ie hard to spot by traffic as low and behind you, going round corners etc. he mainly goes on pavements /parks/trails with them if possible as cycling on busy roads isn’t the safest for anyone the way uk roads are set up. It hasn’t happened but fall off a bike at the pace he goes would be fine

edit to add both mine moved it for commuting and fun and much better for the environment which is important for us. He takes him to nursery on it which is a safe route - there is 5 mins versus my 20min buggy ride or 30min if he took his balance bike /scooter (he’s just 3). I wouldn’t trust a child on a road until much older- my 7 year old is very good but still mainly rides on pavements, he made a small mistake last night which gave him and his dad a shock.

i don’t do it as im very petite and I am too nervous of the weight imbalance. I do cycle to work.

Odds are it's less likely (although not impossible) if you're on a pavement?

As a driver, yes I can

We have no cycle paths.

We have a main A road with cars, buses and many, MANY HGVs

We have narrow, windy lanes that are used at speed by idiot motorists.

Round here is NOT SAFE.

The Netherlands do it properly!

The UK does not!

We are getting there, we need more people to get out of their cars and on to bikes

Balloonhearts, drivers give more space to helmetless cyclists and cyclists with kids

You’d think @Nanny0gg but in terms of fatalities between 2020 and 2021 pedestrian fatalities increased while cycling fatalities actually decreased.

Although it had thankfully been getting safer as a pedestrian due to a number of factors, such as increased car safety features. Reduced speeds and better layouts have a huge part to play in keeping both pedestrians and cyclists safe.

Likely the big increase in cycling has led to better driver awareness. And infrastructure will have played a part whereas pedestrians are still vulnerable on the pavement and at junctions which haven’t been considered. Per mile travelled in 2021 it was roughly as dangerous to be a cyclist as a pedestrian.

It will be very interesting to see if we’ve improved in the next set of data. Hopefully the updates to the Highway Code will have an effect as well as it places greater onus on motorists to safeguard more vulnerable road users. Although from my observations it seems many people aren’t actually that aware of it.

Full report here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2022/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2022#:~:text=In%20reported%20road%20collisions%20in,of%203%25%20compared%20to%202019

Yes true, certainly in rural areas. But most walking doesn’t occur in rural areas, and there is usually the possibility of mounting the verge to allow motorists past.

Maybe Dutch children are happier because they have an amazing and comprehensive network of cycle lanes on which to enjoy cycling with their families!

Probably. But the point is, the Netherlands wasn't just magically created that way. It has become that way after decades of concerted public policy and civic action; a conscious decision on all sides not to always, always put cars first.

I disagree! It pretty much was! When you think of how much both countries have been developed since 1945; cycle lanes were an integral part of that development in the Netherlands and hardly thought about in the U.K. apart from a few specific areas. They seem to be a bit of an afterthought after 2000 but can’t really be created in areas already highly developed.

The netherlands cycling infrastructure came about as a result of campaining, started in part by a man whose kid was killed on the way to school. 1973 was the year of the campaign 'stop the child murder'. Before that cycle paths had been removed to make way for cars. Change can happen.

*campaigning

YANBU. I have vetoed my husband doing this. Both parents have to be happy with it IMHO. I know lots of people do it and that's fine for them if they're happy but I would not be able to stop worrying.

@CecilyP apparently it was much like other European cities in the 1970s - clogged with cars. There were 100 cars per 500 inhabitants and with narrow medieval streets it was really dangerous. In 1971 there were 3,000 people killed by vehicles of which 500 were children which led to a movement called Stop de Kindermoord (stop the child murder) and authorities following the huge public pressure started to rethink planning and how to use the public space.

Roundabout and junction design, giving bikes priority, design and integration with other public transport e.g trains, all served to get people out of cars for short journeys in particular as it became viable and safe.

It takes decent planning and a political willingness to push it through and then as it’s a behaviour change for people and only have to look at this thread to see people are mostly concerned with safety.

So drivers need to understand there are other more vulnerable road users and people need to feel that they are safe if they are putting themselves and especially their children on bikes. There’s examples of that type of change happening here too. In Walthamstow the mini Holland scheme had huge opposition, oil and glass regularly put on the new cycle lanes, planters and bollards destroyed but the council pushed it through. And they actually managed to improve air quality. Now all the various schemes are being connected up.

In London cycling has jumped up to 1.3m journeys done by bike a day. So a third of the number of journeys done by tube which is an huge improvement. Other cities too are massively improving infra.

And look at Paris - by investing in decent infrastructure they increased cycling rates by 54% in one year.

Given cities are where most fatalities happen, where there’s the most congestion and pollution and likely the shortest journeys it makes total sense to start there, and then start linking. With e-bikes the distance people will be able to cycle will increase.

If nobody ever did anything with a child that slightly worried one parent or another, we'd end up with a mental health crisis where huge numbers of adults and children were anxious.
Oh wait, we are already in that crisis.