Young babies on bikes

molgrips – your irrational* fear for your own children’s safety is probably quite healthy.

Read the book though – it will explain far better than I can why extrapolating from experience is a bad idea.

I agree about the truck / bus factor (although if I thought the risk of that happening was significant I’d never ride the road myself – and if it did happen with my little one in tow – I’d probably be a gonner too so at least I wouldn’t have to live with myself!). But that said I have always felt SAFER with the trailer than without because of different attitudes of road users. Even then I ride more defensively than normal (which is mostly to do with being bigger and slower – just as when towing a car trailer – rather than fear for the little person behind).

* My point is it is irrational because the risk is very small, but it also doesn’t reduce significantly at whatever age you think taking them on the road, is OK. Meanwhile – whatever you do instead of going on the road has some intrinsic risk in it – which you have probably underestimated.

Last orders is 1am here Binners.

What’s this all about this one, I’ve missed it?

I don’t have a baby. Can I borry a baby?

I put me mate’s one in a rucksack once, took her down the shops. She loved it. Another one hid in a big bayg and got put in a vayn.

In that case, keep on bickering. you Scots and your wacky ways. Just watching the last king of Scotland at the mo TJ. Thought of you fella 😉

You are confusing me with Elf.

Wasn’t that Idi Amin?

TJ reminds me of Idi Amin.

I don’t want to see in TJ’s fridge. 😯

TJ:

Idi:

I know. I’ve never seen them in the same room either…

I’m gonna eat you elf.

Its uncanny!

Maybe he’s a weird sort of amalgamation of the two of you. Have you watched The Fly? Have you two bwwn experimenting with pod type devices?

Read the book though – it will explain far better than I can why extrapolating from experience is a bad idea.

unless you are a Bayesian

but it also doesn’t reduce significantly at whatever age you think taking them on the road

I do disagree. It’s the low down bit that’s the issue. If I modified my trailer to put it on stilts, like a monster trailer, I’d feel better about it.

Same reason I don’t ride a low rider recumbent in traffic…

No.. but I’ve hardly ever seen a trailer in the UK. Lots in Germany but mostly on cyclepaths.

To clarify: I’ve never heard of, or found reference to, any fatal child trailer accident anywhere in the UK, Europe or anywhere in the rest of the world.

My point was that that could be because a) in Europe they are on cycleways and b) in the UK they are very rare.

No molgrips – its because they are not dangerous. Cycling is safe, trailers are safe, accidents are rare. Serious accidents are very rare

Oh? Ok then, you’re right. I’m just being irrational. Bit strange, since I’ve always prided myself on a rigorous thoughtful and rational approach, but Mr TJ online must be right. It’s a pretty hard thing to swallow, the fact that I’ve been so misguided and deluded about myself and my analytic abilities all these years. Time to have a really long think about myself.

Right where’s my trailer? Off to take my daughter on a ride through traffic. I’ll be concerned about towing my most precious thing around the level of car and truck wheels, but every time a driver fails to see me I must have faith in TJ.

TJ is right. We are safe.

Oh yeah best not bother with a helmet either.

Molgrips – how about reading Polys posts? how about stopping to think a little?

You should read Risk by Dan Gardner (http://www.dangardner.ca/index.php/books) – you’ve almost certainly allowed intuition not rational analysis to assess the risk. We all do it. Rational analysis, does require you to be able to question your “gut” though which is quite difficult when it is about decisions affecting those closest to you.

You are cleary making an emotive decision not one based on rational criteria.

Can you explain why you will put your daughter in a car but not in a trailer despite the risks being of a similar level?

tbh [ not having read any of this] I was amazed how car drivers were when you took a trailer out on the roads – only time I had issues was ironically doing the school run!!
Once folk relaise you are towing children it gives them an new found respect and concern for your safety and you are impossible to cut up really without them driving over th etop of you /trailer. Cars will trundle behind you for ages then smile as they passed. I was almost tempted to drag one eveywhere tbh. Even the little section of dual carriageway i did was excellent and again no problems [ this was with my shopping in not my kids showing my irrational fear].
TJ may be right but you cant understand what the dilemma /fear is for a parent when considering this. To think any decision you had made led to some permanent injury to your child makes the vast majority of people very conservative with risk assesment. Evolutionary speaking this vastly increases our childrens chances of reaching adult hood and spreadig our genes. It is inbuilt and wrapped up in love
I did not use it till they could support their own heads though.

Molgrips – how about reading Polys posts? how about stopping to think a little?

What I’ve been trying to hammer into your thick skull for MONTHS now is that I DO stop to think a great deal. It’s what I do ALL THE TIME.

I have arrived at a different conclusion to you. Is that so impossible to understand? I don’t understand why I you think I’m not thinking simply because our conclusions have differed.

Re traffic, yes, on the times I’ve been on roads drivers were tremendously considerate. But in order to do that they have to be watching where they are going. Drivers do not always do this, as we are all well aware.

In 2002, the rate of passenger (and that’s all passengers, adults and kids) deaths per BILLION passenger kilometres for bicycles was 29.5. Whichever way you look at it, that’s a vanishingly small number. If you rode 10 miles a day every day for your entire life, dying (of natural causes, naturally) at 80, you’d rack up less than half a million km. Or 1/2000 of a billion. The expected number of deaths per 500,000km is 0.01. Which looks like decent odds to me 🙂

(And yes, for cars it was 2.8 per billion, but when the numbers are this small the comparison seems almost irrelevant.)

Or put it another way. In 2002, 130 cyclists where killed in Britain (22 children, 108 adults). That’s out of a population of about 60 million. Proportion of people in Britain killed while cycling in 2002 = 0.0002%.

As an interesting aside, the number of people who became millionaires thanks to the National Lottery in 2003 was 133 😉

i think you are missing an evolutionary argument here
A flas e negative such as molgrip snot exposinghis hchildren to something safe is absolutely fine no damage to the children in the sense they dont die
However if he does it the other way around and has a false positive – does something dangerous then potentially baby dies.
It seems fairly clear that the gene for “reckless” behaviour will decline in the genepool leaving us all to be more cautious than is necessarily supported by scientific methodological methods.
The other view that most parents will be happier to know timmy is cross you did not let him climb the tree that to know you let timmy climb the tree and now he has a broken arm after falling.
It is what it is and no Internet argument or faith in science will change this.
I dont do a scientific study every time I have to decide whteher an activity from my child is safe nor do I search google for peer review studies to help me form an opinion.

Proportion of people in Britain killed while cycling in 2002 = 0.0002%.

the eneitre population doe snot cycle so that is a poor waty of working it out. For example if i never cycle my risk of dying ins zero from cycling.
I assume location is important and time ? More likely in London and during commute times? Certainly seems most dangerous
I assume every/most road club in the UK has a member seriousy injured/killed on the roads as well so yes it is a lottery and whio it happens to is unknown whatever the odds

Junkyard is quite right, we are evolutionarily predisposed to protect our kids.

I mean I’d let my kids climb trees and all the rest of it. I just am somewhat concerned about the specific danger of being low down in certain kinds of traffic. Seems significant to me, thinking about the physics of it.

I promised myself I wouldn’t get drawn back into this again but I have too much admiration of molgrips’ tenacity (of TJ I expect nothing less).

See this pic? Statistically this is very safe, since there are no deaths or serious injuries from cyclists riding along 100m high cliff edges (please don’t ask me to back that up – I’m making a point). Cycling is not dangerous as has been pointed out and this is no harder than riding along a plank of wood in my back garden. Would I do it? Absolutely not, because the consequences of it going wrong are way too high to justify the (rationally thought out) chances of me falling. Am I irrational for coming to that decision?

Even referring back to my Wouter Weylandts post, I wouldn’t hoon down a road in a large peloton at 60mph because – no matter what the stats say – I would be too scared of the consequences of falling, however unlikely. I rarely solo climb even the very easiest climbs because although I’m confident in my ability, the consequences of falling are simply too great (in this case the stats may well be on my side since many competent climbers have fallen on climbs well within their ability).

My point? I’ll let everyone draw their own conclusions.

the eneitre population doe snot cycle so that is a poor waty of working it out.

It illustrates that fatal cycling accidents are extremely rare events, though.

based on a sample of people who dont cycle. i dont need stats to let me know that people who dont do something dont get hurt doing it!
Let me give an extreme example here [finest stw tradition]… russian roulette. If only 2 people EVER play it worldwide then the risk per the entire population is very low indeed. It does not make it safe for the participants though.
I am not denying your point that cycling is [relatively] safe just that that is a bad stat to use as hopefully my extreme example shows.

It also illustrates what a few people have said above, that you should be cautious of reading too much into stats on their own. Fatal cycling accidents might be rare, but maybe all of them are on a windy country road in the height of summer, or in the middle of a city centre at rush hour, or on a Saturday when sports fans are piling out drunk from pubs. Since few of us have the desire to wade through all these studies in that level of detail, we rely on our own judgement, common sense and experience to make decisions.

I do disagree. It’s the low down bit that’s the issue.

So as I asked up there quite seriously, at what age will you let your child ride on the road? Bearing in mind she’ll have to be quite old before she’s more visible than a trailer. A bit of thought on that question rather than just ignoring it by replying “when they’re old enough” might be useful here.

All I’m asking you here is to actually stop and think about it, maybe putting aside your current beliefs for a second – your very assertion that a trailer is more likely to get run over by something because they won’t see it is fundamentally flawed. For a start, as already mentioned, the trailer doesn’t go out on its own, so it’s at least as visible as you on your own. You also appear to be worried about vehicles with high up drivers – the thing is, when they’re more than a few yards away, a low down trailer is just as visible and in their sightline as anything else, and has the bonus of being unusual enough to catch their attention. They don’t suddenly forget about it when they get a bit closer. You do of course also have a flag on a trailer which flutters about right in the driver’s eyeline – movement being something which catches the attention of human vision far better than something static.

Last of all we have the anecdotal experience of those of us who’ve ridden on the road with a trailer lots – I can’t think of a single incident where I’ve not been given lots of room and treated with courtesy (compared to the same experience of getting cut up etc. as all cyclists have when riding on their own). The trouble is, it’s a vicious circle here, as those who think it’s really dangerous never get to find out otherwise (though IIRC you mentioned you have briefly ridden on the road and had just this experience yourself).

So as I asked up there quite seriously, at what age will you let your child ride on the road?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’ll have to wait and see. I suspect there’ll be a graduation from local side streets to agreed routes to full independence. Of course I’m not ignoring it, but it’s not really useful to set an age now. She might hate cycling for all I know 🙂

your very assertion that a trailer is more likely to get run over by something because they won’t see it is fundamentally flawed

Hmm.. it’s more the consequences of a bump. Yes, the trailer’s as visible as me, but that’s not visible enough half the time, is it? I’m not seen on a frequent basis – in fact today I had a near miss because someone didn’t see me.

I’ve also had people come rather close both behind me and to the side. If there’s an extra thing there that’s LESS visible than me but they aren’t expecting, that’s a bit more risk.

Plus evasive action is more difficult with a trailer.

You do make a good case in a reasonable and polite manner, which I appreciate, and it does make me feel that more roads would be acceptable than I had at first thought. However it still depends on the roads in question – and there are few near me that I would feel comfortable with the trailer on.

If I lived 2 miles from the shops along wide quiet roads, I’m sure I’d be doing it by bike all the time.

I agree with tortoise.

I will have to start thinking about all this come September. 😀 At the moment;

I wouldn’t ride my bike with older baby strapped to my chest – too close to the bars, for starters.

I would ride on a suitable bridlway when older baby ok to ride in a suitable trailer or quiet lanes.

I wouldn’t ride with older baby or small child in a trailer on a busy A road, even though my other friend says drivers seem to give a wide berth most of the time or all high up drivers seem to see the trailer flag. Too many assumptions about other road users, although i agree that could be an irrational fear. Or just common sense. Every parent does it differently.

molgrips – Member

Molgrips – how about reading Polys posts? how about stopping to think a little?

What I’ve been trying to hammer into your thick skull for MONTHS now is that I DO stop to think a great deal. It’s what I do ALL THE TIME.

No need to get all shouty and obnoxious

We can all see that you have arrived at your position in an emotive assessment not a logical one.

No need to get all shouty and obnoxious
We can all see that you have arrived at your position in an emotive assessment not a logical one.

No need to push those buttons either. You really are a bit of a wind-up merchant, aren’t you? Let’s try playing nicely

even though my other friend says drivers seem to give a wide berth most of the time

That was exactly my experience as well. Drivers who squash by me when on a bike but would give a trailer a wide berth or hang back. My guess is that was because although they knew the trailer was there they couldn’t see all of it so they took more avoiding action that normal. I never felt unsafe with the trailer and used it almost daily on the roads for 4 years.

In 2002, the rate of passenger (and that’s all passengers, adults and kids) deaths per BILLION passenger kilometres for bicycles was 29.5. Whichever way you look at it, that’s a vanishingly small number. If you rode 10 miles a day every day for your entire life, dying (of natural causes, naturally) at 80, you’d rack up less than half a million km. Or 1/2000 of a billion

Where did you get this stat? Are you sure it refers to an American billion,not a British billion?

No need to get all shouty and obnoxious

We can all see that you have arrived at your position in an emotive assessment not a logical one. #

Oh! interesting turn of events, sounds like TJ is on the back foot!

Your odds of dying on a bike are in the millions to one is my understanding

We can all see that you have arrived at your position in an emotive assessment not a logical one

I don’t think you know what ‘logical’ actually means.

Molgrips – load of folk have pointed out where your”logic” has failed.

I ask you again. Why put a new born in a car but not on a bike – the odds of an accident causing death an injury are of a similar level – millions to one.

Back off TJ – see what trying to discuss this without the need for all the argumentative stuff gets:

You do make a good case in a reasonable and polite manner, which I appreciate, and it does make me feel that more roads would be acceptable than I had at first thought.

Thanks, molgrips!

I understand your concerns about busy and “dangerous” roads – not where I’d choose to ride by myself. Clearly if you don’t have the relatively quiet roads I have, our situations are different, though it may also be a question of perception – I imagine most people would think the roundabout I regularly ride across with kids is far too dangerous. You do keep talking about riding to the shops though – I take mine to Tumbletots and to the park by bike.

TJ in the following scenario who seems more likely to get hurt: A or B to answer (don’t add anything)

Road, blind bend, car comes careening into the ‘space’ which is blind and into an object–

A. The object is a child on a bike
B. The object is a another car with a child secured inside

I ask you again. Why put a new born in a car but not on a bike – the odds of an accident causing death an injury are of a similar level – millions to one

Have we not been through this already? Every time the argument reaches a stalemate some largely irrelevant question is dragged back up again. Have you not learnt that many of us on here don’t live our lives by stats and studies alone.

The clue to the answer, by the way, could well be in this bit:

the odds of an accident causing death an injury are of a similar level

…so the stats are deemed redundant and we use other criteria to make a decision. Experience, need, acceptable consequence and no doubt a bit of heart too.

What’s your definition of logic TJ?