Thursday, June 12, 2008

Learning about bike safety

The local teevee news had coverage of a little girl who was hit by a pickup truck while riding her bicycle.

Fortunately, her injuries were fairly minor - nothing she won't recover from. She got her head busted open, however, and the focus of the coverage was about her negligence in not wearing a bike helmet.

No problem with that. Every cyclist is significantly safer with a brain-bucket on.

What irritates me is... there was NO MENTION of who was actually at fault in the accident, or how the accident happened, etc. Wouldn't that be meaningful information?

There was a brief follow-up report, and I caught a bit of coverage on the other TV station. Turns out the other party in the accident was a teenage kid, yakkin' on his cell phone, who backed into the little girl. Probably out of his parents' driveway. He was cited.

That's another important lesson for kids, about bike safety. Expect motorists - especially teenagers with cell phone jammed to ear - to do really stupid, unpredictable stuff. (And wear a helmet!)

And you parents of driving-age kids... teach them about responsibility! A child riding a bike without a helmet is only endangering herself. A punk in a big pickup truck is in control of a potentially-lethal weapon, and in this case, he's lucky he didn't kill this child.

Story HERE. (Pic lifted from the TV news website.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In contrast this article focuses on the driver and does not even mention that the girl was not wearing a helmet.