First bike safety class offered at high school
SAMOHI Every cycling advocacy event here brings out scores of high school students who roll onto campus on beach cruisers, 10-speeds and road bikes shortly before the first bell rings, some expressing their enthusiasm through hoots, all united in their belief that theirs is the best mode of transportation.
But in those semesterly “Bike to School” days at Santa Monica High School, several parents and biking advocates have taken notice of some rather alarming cycling practices, some students riding without helmets, others jumping on and off sidewalks, creating a safety problem for themselves and the people around.
As a result, these cycling advocates — the Samohi Solar Alliance and Samohi Bike Coalition — recently banded together with parents to host a bike safety seminar at the high school over the weekend, teaching teenagers the essentials of road safety, from wearing a helmet to behaving like a motorist when on the street.
The class, considered the first of its kind at Samohi, was led by two certified instructors with the League of American Bicyclists, starting the two-day course on Friday with a three-hour classroom lecture on road rules and safety and continuing on Sunday with a day-long behind-the-handlebars lesson on city streets. The $25 class drew about eight students over the two-day seminar.
The course was proposed in part by Alison Kendall, a Samohi parent who serves as the school’s PTSA Transportation Committee chair, a champion of a bike safety class for the past few years.
“When we started to have the Bike to School days and we got 50-90 high schoolers biking to Samohi, I started to think (a class) was more urgent because I noticed that more than half of the students didn’t have a helmet,” Kendall said. “There were quite often biking the wrong way down the street or zipping on and off the sidewalk or biking on Lincoln [Boulevard] in a hair-raising manner.”
With the help of fellow resident Barbara Filet, whom Kendall met during a series of transportation workshops hosted by City Hall, the two women were able to secure the services of Ron Durgin and Chris Quint, two certified instructors who teach bike safety courses in the Los Angeles area.
Durgin has more than 20 years of experience riding in different cities, commuting to work in Santa Monica every day from his home in Beverly Hills. Neither instructor owns a car.
The course covers cycling practices that could be perceived as unconventional to some but are assured safe by the instructors, preaching riders to act as motorists and refrain from traveling along the gutter. Safe cycling is about riding predictably, using signals and communicating well with drivers and pedestrians, Durgin said.
“I see out there every day people wearing iPods, even adults,” Durgin said.
The class reconvened Sunday morning when the students spent several hours maneuvering through a course set up on the Samohi parking lot, venturing out in the afternoon for a five-mile trip through Santa Monica,covering basic road rules much like in driver’s education.
Rachel Horn, the co-president of the Samohi Solar Alliance, said teenagers don’t often think about bike safety, pointing out that the students who wear helmets tend to be the more avid cyclists.
“For me it’s really important to have this class because we’re promoting biking to help the environment,but if something were to happen safety-wise, that would just kill the movement,” Horn said. “I think bike safety is something that needs to be more advocated, especially in high schools because we’re still young.”
While Kendall doesn’t believe a bike safety course will be adopted into the curriculum at Santa Monica High School, she hopes the seminar will spur some interest at the middle school level. The PTSA is currently working with City Hall to offer a bike safety course at low cost to residents.
Among the students who participated over the weekend was Spencer Moore, a freshman and member of the Samohi Bike Coalition.
Moore rides his bikes most days to Samohi, a three-mile trek that takes about half an hour.
“I think it’s good to offer a bike safety class,” Moore said. “It gives kids more [courage] to ride on the road.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 2, 2008. Read the original PDF.