Memorandum from Nottingham City Council's
Road Safety Team (RS 72)
Project Lifecycle
Currently, child cycle training in Nottingham
schools is inadequate. Even adopting Cycle England's Bikeability
Programme will not assure sufficiently high numbers of well trained
cyclists for the future to make a difference.
Cyclists are often perceived as renegades who
do not conform to the rules subjected to other road users. Complaints
received from both motorists and pedestrians regarding cyclists'
risk taking behaviour are on the increase. This creates resentment
leading to little or no consideration of the cyclists' needs in
mixed traffic. If this adversarial trend continues, it could leave
cyclists—especially the novice—feeling vulnerable
and less inclined to use the cycle as a regular form of transport.
Most children are introduced to the bicycle
as a toy rather than a mode of transport. Having been taught to
balance moving forward most children are left to develop further
skills unassisted. Traditionally the next time the child receives
any cycle training is if they undertake a cycle proficiency type
scheme towards the end of their primary education.
Whether or not the child receives this training
is dependent on the school's voluntary participation in the scheme,
the child possessing a suitable cycle and being able to attend
each session (as most are held outside normal school hours). This
conspires to make access to formal cycle training less likely;
especially for children attending school in the city's deprived
wards. This also leaves the majority of children with no exposure
to any formal vehicle training until they are 16 as a learner
motorcyclist or seventeen as a learner driver. Although the need
to pass a driver/rider test modifies the vehicle user's behaviour,
attitudes influencing that behaviour have usually hardened. Even
if the majority of children in Nottingham had received cycle training
in its current format, would it have sufficient impact to influence
their attitudes on risk taking and transport choice as a future
vehicle user?
Nottingham's Road Safety Team is preparing to
pilot a new approach to cycle training with the help of Nottingham's
schools. The intention is to provide structured cycle training
to children from the age of five until they become competent to
take part in Cycle England's Bikeability Levels One and Two courses.
To overcome the problem of accessibility, the scheme will provide
suitable cycles for the child at each stage. Introducing the child
to appropriate cycle training at this young age offers opportunities
to engage the family, school and community with key support information
at each stage of the child's cycling development. As the child
develops demonstrable safe cycling and road user techniques it
could help alleviate the concerns of most primary head teachers,
governors and parents to allow school cycle journeys.
It is anticipated that early and then staged
interventions are likely to produce a more risk averse, disciplined
future adult vehicle user. With a new generation more likely to
choose cycling as their mode of transport or at the very least
be more empathetic to the needs of the cyclists.
Lifecycle: safe cycling for life
May 2008
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