3 Things To Teach Your Kids About Bike Safety

One of the biggest obstacles and accomplishments for many kids is learning how to ride a bike. However, as their parent, this is just where the beginning of your worries start. Once your child knows how to ride a bike, they’re going to want to ride this bike more and more often, which means that they’ll potentially be putting themselves in harm’s way more and more often. Luckily, there are things you can teach your child that will help him or her stay safe even while riding their bikes on or near the road. To show you exactly what, here are three things to teach your kids about bike safety.

Stress The Importance Of A Helmet

Arguably the most important aspect of safety when riding a bike is wearing a helmet. Protecting your child’s head and brain should be your top priority when allowing them to ride a bike. Hopefully, you’ll be able to instill this principle in them so deeply that they’ll wear their helmet even when you’re not around or if their friends decide not to wear helmets. According to KidsHealth.org, you should also stress to your child the importance of always having the chin strap fastened, as this will help keep the helmet in place if an accident does occur.

Take Extra Care Around Cars or Traffic

While your kids can usually have free reign to ride their bikes in your driveway, on your property, or in empty parking lots, it’s much different to have to kids bike near traffic. If they’ll be doing this, whether they’re biking to school and headed over to a friend’s house, you’ve got to teach them how to do so safely, even if you’ll be joining them on the trip. According to David Mozer, a contributor to ibike.org, you should teach your kids not to play in traffic or ride on busy streets. Also, teach them how to safely cross the street on a bike and how to bike with the flow of traffic rather than against it.

Make Yourself Easily Seen

Whenever your child is going to be riding his or her bike, you should have them wear clothes that will make it easier to be seen. Many drivers don’t look for bikers very well, especially if those bikers are smaller children. So to easily be seen when biking near cars, Saint Luke’s recommends that you have your children wear bright clothing. You should also put accessories on your child’s bike that are reflective. For increased safety, you could even have your children wear reflective and bright vests while biking to ensure that they’re seen.

To keep your kids safe while biking, consider implementing some of the safety tips mentioned above.