Bikes Are Flying Off the Racks, Not Down the Streets

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Bikes Are Flying Off the Racks, Not Down the Streets

 

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Worried Parents, Sprawling Cities Reduce Riding

 

By Elaine Rivera

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 17, 2003; Page B01

 

Like most of his friends in Eldersburg, Md., 6-year-old Nate Diamond has a bicycle. It's black and has training wheels and spends most of its life in the garage. He wheels it out maybe once a month, to ride only as far as his mother can see.

 

"He doesn't ride it very much," Sally Diamond conceded, as she considered a display of new bicycles outside an Alexandria bike shop. "There's more traffic, and people aren't as nice as they used to be."

 

Still, she and her husband, Tom, were shopping for a bigger bike as a Christmas present for Nate -- thus contributing to two apparently contradictory trends: Even as sales of children's bikes soar, children are riding them less and less.

 

"It's not like when we were kids, when you'd just take off and go two miles to the store or wherever," Tom Diamond said. "Those days are gone."

 

When kids do ride their bikes, it is often a pale version of that childhood tradition. They ride endlessly around a single block or cul-de-sac, up and down the same street or, in busier neighborhoods, up and down the driveway. It is a far cry from days gone by when generations of children arrived home from school, jumped on their 10-speeds or banana bikes and rode -- no helmets, no chaperones, no deadline except dusk or dinner.

 

"Parents just don't feel comfortable anymore letting their children go out and ride their bikes alone," said Bill Wilkinson, executive director of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking. "Our communities are not designed for it."

 

Neighborhoods and schools are built for cars, rather than pedestrians or cyclists. In a world that feels ever more dangerous, parents drive children everywhere to make sure they're safe. And in two-career families, less free time for parents means less free time for children as well.

 

"There's soccer or swimming or music lessons," said Wilkinson, whose organization lobbies parents to get their children to walk and ride more bikes to combat obesity. "Most kids are never out of direct supervision of an adult."

 

The result is a documented decline in bike riding, according to an annual survey by the National Sporting Goods Association. The organization surveys 10,000 households annually on biking participation among people ages 7 to 17. It found that about 20.4 million children in the United States rode a bicycle six or more times a year in 1991, and 16.8 million did so last year.

 

At the same time, more children's bicycles are being sold. That is partly because they are cheaper than ever, according to Matt Wiebe of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News magazine. Wiebe said more than 80 percent of sales are made at Wal-Mart, where bikes can be found for a little as $30.

 

"That's the cost of a decent basketball," Wiebe said.

 

Although there are no aggregate figures for bike sales, Wiebe said the trend is tracked through imports, which have spiked over the past five years. There has been "phenomenal growth" in the import of juvenile bikes, those with wheels 20 inches or smaller, at the same time that suppliers and retailers report leaner inventories.

 

But buying the bike doesn't mean riding the bike. "It's like when we go out and buy the exercise equipment or join the health club," Wilkinson said. "We think we got the benefit out of it."

 

Connor Wayne, 8, spends more time on his scooter than his bike. Either way, Connor volunteered as he scooted along beside his parents on a walk through their Alexandria neighborhood, "I'm not allowed to go around the block by myself."

 

His mother, Kristi Wayne, said she and her husband have been discussing when -- if ever -- they should let him take off on his bike alone. "We don't know at what point that would be," Sean Wayne said, casting an uncertain look at his wife. "Times are different now."

 

Times and traffic are both different. "Before urban sprawl happened, kids could walk or bike to school," said Angela D. Mickalide, program director at the National Safe Kids Campaign. Despite the increase in traffic, she said, bicycle-related deaths among children 14 and under have declined by 60 percent in the past 15 years.

 

Four hundred children were killed in bike accidents in 1987; the figure dropped to 168 last year. Mickalide said children who do ride these days wear helmets and take other safety precautions, such as having adult supervision. Another reason for the decline, she said, is that children aren't riding bikes as much.

 

Arlington parent Ed Fendley, a cyclist himself, says there is a different type of risk in not allowing children the freedom to ride: loss of independence. "I don't want my kids not to know how to get around on their own," said Fendley, who noted that his son, Zack, 12, rides a mile to school and two miles to lacrosse practice by himself -- wearing a helmet, of course. He said that building his son's sense of independence is as crucial as the daily exercise.

 

"He's not dependent on his mom taking him everywhere," Fendley said. "I don't want my kids to grow up that way -- that the way they've gotten around is in the back of their mom's minivan," he said. "Independence is just as important for their health."

 

But Fendley, who was chatting recently with other parents about how to convince their children to ride their bikes more often, might be the exception.

 

Mary Skocz, president of the PTA at Wakefield High School in Arlington, doesn't have bikes at her home. She stopped buying them because they kept getting stolen. Her son, Tim, 16, walks to school a couple of blocks away.

 

Skocz marveled at how times have changed. She remembered growing up in Butler, Pa., where the bike rack on Main Street was always full after school. "Kids biked or walked everywhere," she said, adding that nobody locked their doors, and it was the car that sat in the garage for days on end.

 

"It was a big deal if your mother drove you to the swimming pool," she said. "You would have to be getting over a broken leg -- that was a luxury service."