You are reading a single comment by @d0cA and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@d0cA
i've just been doing a bit of research into this - more to come in a week or so on that, but in the meantime, what i've managed to glean specifically about bike training is:
there's not really any evidence that it does any harm: many studies have shown increased knowledge of people riding after having done training, and some have shown that more people ride. one study did show that there were more accidents in kids who'd had cycling training - but that may be confused by the fact that more kids were cycling??
the new 'bikeability' training has 3 levels. the first two are offered (or planned to be offered) to kids via schools. government funding is available for this, and is increasing - but is still not too much!) the higher two levels (i.e. 2 and 3) are more for adults, including those who already ride. it's kind of like the motorcycle tests, if anyone has taken them, and there is a definite emphasis on being on the road and aware of other traffic, etc.
this bikeability training is profoundly different from cycling proficiency tests that used to be carried out in schools (some of you may remember the "riding around the playground and then getting a gold star" sort of attitude from 20 odd years ago).
so, quite possibly worth doing for a lot of people, and even for some of the people on this forum (mashton - maybe you should do it before you teach others - or are you going to teach them about safe landings on your elbow?! ;-). what this training does not address, of course, is the attitudes of drivers and the overall emphasis of society against cycling (did you know that 40% of journeys in the UK are only 2 miles, and 68% of journeys are under 5 miles? from the dept. for transport's own figures), which are all factors that have been tackled in holland and germany, where in some places cycling levels are between 50 and 70%.