Not related to my commute but this is the best place to discuss bicycle street safety I think.
I have a kid that has been riding for over a year and they are great at street safety in our little neighborhood streets (no thru traffic) and awesome at bike path etiquette with other trail users. So I didn’t think twice about this simple road crossing. In hindsight I want I should have told them very specifically what to do. I don’t recall if I was vague or specific but I obviously didn’t give as much direction as I should have beyond crossing the road once some cars passed.
The yellow lines were my intended plan for us to just cross the street and continue on the trail once we let some initial cars pass.
The pink line is for the path my kid followed. For some reason my child turned at the edge of the road and started riding along into oncoming traffic once she crossed the road instead of riding into the parking lot. Maybe the transition looked too rough there and she was looking for a smoother drop off the road or maybe she didn’t know where we were going.
The red line was a fast moving SUV that came upon us as we were making it into the gravel lot. They miraculously saw us and gave us a wide berth. I don’t know if one of us would have been hit if they didn’t see us. I did ride up on her wheel and tried to calmly steer her into the lot because I was worried I might panic her into darting out in the road if I just yelled something like ‘get out of the road’
Anyway I hope this doesn’t come off as rambling – I wanted to share my close call in case others can learn from it. I am a street safety zealot with my kids because i know how quickly life can end on 🇺🇸 roads. I am constantly drilling them on street safety and this is one of my biggest fears.
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