Traffic Awareness

One of the biggest challenges we face is letting our children grow and learn about risk and danger in a real, yet controlled way. Cycling is great fun and it also can be a useful means of transport as your family get's a little older and perhaps the kids can use their bikes to get themselves to their friends places... afterall the Taxi routine can get a bit much sometimes. 

The concern that all parents face is knowling if their near teenager has a comprehensive awareness of vehicle traffic and the safe ways to interact with it. Afterall you probably have quite sensibly made all the traffic risk management decisions for them, or travelled everywhere in the car.

At Hornsby Cycles we believe that Primary School children can learn how to assess and manage traffic risks, to know when to ride on the footpath (note that children under 12 & adults supervising may ride on the footpath) and when it may be reasonable to ride on a road. Equally children can begin to learn the road rules which are there to try and make traffic behave in consistent and predictable ways so that there are less inherent uncertainties or risks.

This sounds like a tough thing to do but the folks ar CARES (Community and Road Eduction Scheme) have a program designed specifically for schools students in years 5 and 6 (and others by arrangement). The sesion covers all road safety elements and is run by the NSW Police. It has both classroom and on the bike sessions. These focus on proper bike control and also managing your riding in a traffic like situation (on a lifelike half scale enclosed road network).

Hornsby Cycles is proud to support CARES with new bikes and servicing support because we believe that cycling can be made both fun AND safe, legitimate form of recreation and transport. CARES at St Ives (our local facility) can be contacted on 9983 1142.