Staying safe and sharing the roadways
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Biking is a long beloved hobby and an experience that most Americans have had the pleasure of enjoying.
But as cars have dominated the roadways, the hobby and bikers safety have experienced a decline. At the Eva and Jim Maartens Alumni Center on Western Kentucky University’s campus, the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission held a conference on Friday discussing safety, growing the hobby and making it more accessible.
Local organizations like BikeWalkBG have aimed to teach the younger generation about safety when it comes to biking.
“That’s when people are most impressionable and that’s when they’re most vulnerable to. So if we can teach them safety, they can try to keep themselves safe right now. And then as they grow into drivers, hopefully they’ll recognize the vulnerability of the bicycle riders and recognize the hand signals that those kids are using and know what it means when somebody does this. And that means they’re going to stop so that they see that from their side as a user and from the driver viewer,” said BikeWalkBG coordinator Natasha Smith.
While the hobby has ebbed, and flowed in terms of participation, recently, it’s experiencing an increase in national participation. With the increase, though, conferences like these are important as they aim to help spread awareness, create collaborative efforts and uplift the biking community.
“Most recently, and I really think due to COVID a lot, we’ve seen like a resurgence of people getting out and biking. There were a lot of, you know, being outside was kind of one of those activities that felt safe. And a lot of people started just casual bike clubs or bike groups. And so we’ve just really seen like a resurgence of people getting out there biking. Bike busses have become really popular, which has been another resurgence of getting like youth out, schools involved, kids involved parents. So we’ve really seen just like a lot of new growth in the bike community and biking in general,” said Anna Tang, a program specialist with Bicycle Friendly America.
To check out more from BikeWalkBG and the League of American Cyclists you can click the links.
