Where Is the Safest Place for a Baby to Ride on a Bike?
Advice on bicycling with your baby.
By Ryan Mijker
In North America, babies are expected to exist kept off a bike until they are at to the lowest degree ix months quondam and are able to clothing a helmet. So why do some parents flout convention?
Online research produces very niggling information on bicycling with newborns. Angela Koch, advocacy and events coordinator with Revolution Cycles in Arlington, VA, institute what footling research there was focused on negative assumption and misinformation. Instead of depending on that information, parents take looked to other parts of the world where cycling with small babies is widespread.
When to start bicycling with a baby is a personal judgment. For Carie Weisenbach-Folz, a mother of three from Portland, OR, the time came as soon as she felt physically able. "I was a little nervous with my beginning child. Our oldest is now six and a half and we started to ride with him when he was about ane month quondam."
Weisenbach-Folz felt more comfortable riding with her 3rd child, starting merely weeks afterwards he was built-in.
Jessica Roberts, a program manager with Alta Planning + Pattern in Portland, OR, started cycling with her kid when he was effectually five months erstwhile, approaching it more cautiously.
There is a lot of fear around parenting and this extends to cycling with your newborn. In that location was a "fearfulness drummed into us [bicycling parents] about vibrations that would impairment his nervous system," Roberts said.
I asked Diana Leung – a research assistant at BC Children's Infirmary in Vancouver, BC – to contact one-half a dozen researchers specializing in pediatric injuries to enquire about the condom of cycling with newborns. None knew of any literature or hard evidence to support the merits that vibrations from normal bicycle riding would lead to encephalon harm in a newborn.
Parents are concerned about different risks and threats; many, such every bit Jasper Lieber, told me that other road users and collisions with cars were their biggest fears. Others saw no extra risk and no difference between cycling and walking with a stroller.
Todd Litman, founder and executive director of the Victoria Transportation Policy Constitute, who started cycling with his oldest son when he was just days sometime, addressed the risk.
He said: "There is no reason why, if a child is able to be carried in a car, they shouldn't be able to be carried in a bike trailer. A lot of people overlook the risks and stresses associated with driving, but make a big deal near bicycling."
Bicycling with your newborn can be washed safely. Some parents I have spoken to choose to bike with a auto seat secured in a bicycle trailer.
Weisenbach-Folz said: "With our first child nosotros had him buckled into a regular car seat that was strapped into a trailer. I was non super worried about rubber. Nosotros made him as condom as we could." For their second child they purchased a Bakfiets and secured the automobile seat to its base.
Living in a city with a decent cycling network helps, specially cycle tracks separated from the roadway, and and then does good route planning.
Bicycle boulevards, low traffic streets with proficient connections and safe intersections are oftentimes the primary routes for parents cycling with their newborns. Angela Koch, whose first child was born in Jacksonville, FL – "a cycling nightmare" – was relieved to move to Portland where her two other children were introduced to cycling on some of the urban center'southward insufficiently safer streets.
Parents accept stiff motivations to start riding with their newborns, such as convenience and pleasure. Brett Hondorp, a father from Portland, told me, "With the wheel we could but park outside and never have to become into the parking garage. Information technology was the healthiest affair for me and my child."
All parents interviewed for this commodity managed the risks they were taking with their children past choosing appropriate carriers and tranquillity cycling routes.
This article was originally published in Momentum Magazine, 2011.
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Source: https://momentummag.com/bicycling-with-newborns/
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