Summer is here. Trying to limit time the kids are staring at screens.

16yo daughter wants to go to her mates house for the day. She’s a good mountain biker, lots of common sense. I’ve not ridden with her much on the road, so I suggest she goes on her mountain bike. It is in good nick and I point out it might be better to walk the bike over the road rather than wait in the middle of the road for the right turn off the A Road onto 2 miles of back road before her mate’s house. She has her phone and her other mate, who rides to our house on roads all the time. The A road is fairly straight, no tight bends.

She refuses to wear hi viz, but ok with helmet. I let that go, saying its your life and this might just save it.

It is a clear day, no wind, mid week, 11am.

The Mrs goes mental when she finds out! She won’t look at facts after a week now!!

Anyone had success convincing emotional wives how safe it is in relative terms? I’ve seen the government table that says 29 million kilometres gives you a 50/50 chance of death, compared to 370 million km in a car. Yes car safer, but that would be 3 people in car and child not learning to be self sufficient. I totally agree that it “feels” unsafe if you listen to the media.

Ideally I’m looking for a list of comparable risks would be good. I’ll bet a 3 mile ride down an A Road is the same as being 0.5kg over weight, or 1% more fat than ideal, or drinking 10 units of alcohol per week, or driving 35km in a car. Someone must have done one that hits home with protective parents. The real danger here for me is inactivity and indolence.

At 16 you can move out, join the army and drive a tractor!

You are trying to “solve” an emotional response.

She’s 16, old enough to ride a moped FFS.

I used to cycle to school along the A6 for 2 miles each way every day for 5 years, including going home for lunch.
No helmet, because they hadn’t been invented!

tell her she is….
wrong
stupid
ridiculous

silence will reign for another week.

At the risk of sounding like TJ, I’d suggest to your daughter that high viz doesn’t give you helmet hair.
Nothing we say on this thread will help you sort out the other matter 🙂

If a man makes a statement, and there isn’t a woman around to hear it, is he still wrong?

You are right.

How about you and your wife ride the route with your daughter so your wife can see for herself?

It’s a sad day when ordinary reality becomes an unacceptable risk

Me and a mate (both 8 or 9) plus his grandad cycled to the pub along 2 miles of A road back in the day. Used to venture out on foot and bike across all sorts of distances at that age. Would never let my lad do that though.

A Bikeability course might do the trick. And, in due course, help your daughter become a better car driver.

Can have babies, but can’t go on a road????????

Alternative route?

You’re not winning this one.

“Used to venture out on foot and bike across all sorts of distances at that age. Would never let my lad do that though.”

“I totally agree that it “feels” unsafe if you listen to the media.”

two cross posted related statements if ever i saw.

Its not computers/xboxes that are killing future generations its fear.

Exploring new places on your own/wih mates is a life skill.

+1 for the Bikeability

a) for the skills and awareness it will teach your daughter
b) it stops the debate being ‘your opinion’ vs your wife’s

Also, ask the Bikeability people if they’ll have a chat with your wife to reassure her?

There are two issues here.
One is about cycling on an A road.
The other is about disagreeing with a woman.
I suggest the latter takes precedence in one’s quest for a happy life.

She can outrun a theif/mugger on the bike quicker than on foot.

At 16 I did what must have been a 45 mile round trip (to a swimming pool where I went swimming) with my mate. Some A-roads, some B-roads.

To be fair though, I did die and write this from beyond the grave 🙁

If a man makes a statement, and there isn’t a woman around to hear it, is he still wrong?

Oh, I am stealing this. 🙂

To the OP. I think it is ridiculous to try and stop a 16 year old girl from riding on the road due to safety concerns.
She is old enough to get married, join the armed forces, leave home.
My daughter is 16 and lives in Canada. She can legally drive over there.

“The other is about disagreeing with a woman”
But there are two women, wife and daughter. He’ll be disagreeing with one of them, whatever he does 🙄

Good info from CTC. It says

Is cycling really that dangerous?

No. In general, cycling in Britain is a relatively safe activity.

Using official road casualty and road traffic reports, population stats and the National Travel Survey, CTC calculates that, on average:
?One cyclist is killed on Britain’s roads for every 27 million miles travelled by cycle – the equivalent to over 1,000 times around the world;
?Each year, there are 8 million cycle trips for every cycling death;
?The general risk of injury from cycling in Great Britain is just 0.048 injuries per 1,000 hours of cycling.

Also:
?According to a paper that looked at sports injuries, tennis is riskier than ‘outdoor cycling’ (5 injuries per 1,000 hours for tennis, 3.5 for cycling). ‘Rowing machine exercise’ came in at 6 injuries per 1,000 hours;
?You are more likely to be injured in an hour of gardening than in an hour of cycling;
?As mentioned above, the health benefits of cycling outweigh the injury risks by between 13:1 and 415:1, according to various studies.

These facts, together with the reference sources, are included in our road safety briefing (link http://www.ctc.org.uk/campaigning/views-and-briefings/road-safety-and-cycling-overview).

http://www.ctc.org.uk/resources/ctc-cycling-statistics#How many people think that cycling is too dangerous?

But there are two women, wife and daughter. He’ll be disagreeing with one of them, whatever he does.

This is true. A rock and a hard place. I suggest withdrawing from enemy lines back to a manshed.

Just listen to these fools making rational arguments and reasonable assumptions. You really are like children.

Wives are bit like killer cyborgs from the future:
They can’t be reasoned with or bargained with
They don’t feel pity or remorse
And they absolutely WILL NOT stop until you are wrong.

Put your wife on the bikeability course (maybe even send your daughter, too).

From age 12 I was riding five miles each way to school, including negotiating Kingston (upon Thames) town centre in both directions. Every day, rain or shine, in the dark in winter with just crappy dynamo lights ! No helmet or hi-viz, although my parents made a limp attempt to make me wear a sam brown belt. They failed.

Maybe roads were a bit quieter then.

Anyway, she’s sixteen, I’d suggest that she’s perfectly able to make up her own mind whether to do it. If your wife is finding this hard she’s going to have a proper meltdown when your daughter does something that is actually reckless !

I started mountain biking when I was about 9 or 10 and rode regularly on A roads alone from when I was about 12. This wasn’t back in the summer of ’76, when I was your daughter’s age it was 2004.

And you’ll never win the hi-vis argument, I never wore it despite my dad’s protestations.

Sometimes you have to put up with the fallout to win an argument. You will never convince her with facts, just tell her that you support your daughters autonomy and if she won’t then she needs to be avaliable to ferry her around as you aren’t going to.
It’ll be horrible for a while, but the benefits for your daughter will be worth it.
Mind you if your daughter is one of the very few casualties your life will be absolute hell.

Buy your daughter a moped and put her through CBT training, problem sorted.

Rather than a high viz vest requiring intervention from the fashion police, why not a stylish brightly coloured jacket?

I suppose it depends on the A road! If it was the A9 then I can see her concern! I also found your statement that you hadn’t seen her ride much on the road confusing. My son rides on quiet a toads at 11, but that is because I HAVE seen him ride on the road and am aware of his reasonable Road sense. However as others have said regardless of the logic, fact and statistics you will never persuade someone who thinks you are wrong about a highly emotive subject (regardless of gender).

Just tell her to get a boyfriend that’s old enough to drive, problem solved.

Worries me as well my son is 15 and is riding on A roads locally. Just have to trust them and brief them on the fact that all drivers are stoopid till proven otherwise 😉

Rather than a high viz vest requiring intervention from the fashion police, why not a stylish brightly coloured jacket?

or give her ready brek for breakfast.

Not sure anyone has enough info comment. A lifetime of road riding including more time trialling on dual carriageways than I care to remember and there are plenty of A roads I would actively avoid riding on. Not all A roads are born equally. A streetview link to the section in question would help.

From this I conclude that my mum wished me dead, as when I was 15 she was quite happy for me to ride out of Bristol over the Severn bridge and into South Wales/Forest of Dean on my own.
This was before mobile phones etc so if I needed rescuing it was 10p at a phone box.

My parents should be locked up for some sort of neglect by the sound of it.

In primary school I was allowed free reign on the farm/estate (about a 3 mile radius of home) after that I don’t ever remember being told I couldn’t ride somewhere, it probably helped that there weren’t any places I wanted to go within an 11yr olds cycling distance, but by 16 I was doing 20-30 mile loops including some ‘bad’ A-Roads.

Having said that, my younger brother is/was a liability on a bike, so in comparison I probably looked quite sensible!

I had a 90minute loop that took in about 500m of A road.

I got crushed against a wall by a lorry on that 500m four years ago. I now have a 60minute loop with no A road.

My son wanted to get into road cycling at 16 – I actively discouraged him and am glad I did.

Indolence might have a long term effect, it’s not going to suddenly remove your daughter tomorrow.

I often wonder when this molly coddling / over protection by parents started and what caused it?

I was young in 70s/80s and I and all my friends could do what we wanted as far as cycling around, going around on out own etc,. from about 10 years up.
I cycled to school 5 miles away along dual carriageways between age of 12 and 16.

That was through to mid 80s and I used the same approach with my child so why is today’s generation of parents so frightened when the risk has not become any greater?
Presumably has to be media coverage, scare-mongering and so on.

I was young in 70s/80s and I and all my friends could do what we wanted as far as cycling around, going around on out own etc,. from about 10 years up.
I cycled to school 5 miles away along dual carriageways between age of 12 and 16.

That was through to mid 80s and I used the same approach with my child so why is today’s generation of parents so frightened when the risk has not become any greater?
Presumably has to be media coverage, scare-mongering and so on.

Whilst maybe true (its before my time), you did have green cross code, stranger danger, etc etc in the 70’s. That wasn’t there in the 40’s (unless you count paranoia about communists/fascists).

Possibly an element of rose tinted glasses, and everyone’s belief that they are not only the best parents in their peer group but also considerably better/cooler than their parents were.