safety question

[sfa]

I'm having roughly the same problem with my 11 y.o. DD, only it's with driveways/parking lots. She wants to ride her bike to school but I KNOW she doesn't have the skills to handle the traffic on the main road (two way, quite busy, starts right by a beltway interchange--I'll make a left turn from our road onto the street, but I've been handling traffic for 25 years. You have to look for traffic coming from five possible places.) so I have her ride on the sidewalk, but I've told her to stop at each business driveway--the McDonald's, the 7-11, the bank, the restaurant. The drivers there are just not looking for anyone on the sidewalk and she doesn't yet have the skills/judgement to cycle along, look at what *might* be coming out of/turning into these driveways, catch their eye and give the "you'd better stop because I have the right of way" look or, alternately, stop when she sees a potential danger. So I just told her to always stop no matter what, just to be sure.

I think that's the best approach with dogs, too--it's not that she's afraid of dogs, she just needs to have a healthy appreciation of what the danger could be and until she has the skills and judgement to know how to make a split second decision about each situation, it's better to have a uniform approach of stopping and letting the dog go ahead.

Sarah

[malkin]

Hopping off a bike is a very handy and underused skill!

When my chain bound up in an intersection last week, I was happy to become an instant pedestrian!