Fifth graders at Mary Harris "Mother" Jones ES turn the rodeo stations into a bicycle ballet.
Truesdell ES makes the news as the DC Department of Transportation celebrates the DC Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Education Program along with International Walk to School Day.
For more information, or to find out
how to bring bicycle and pedestrian
education to your community, contact
safetyed@waba.org, or call 202.518.0524.
In Maryland, the program is in the phase of expansion by means of teacher trainings and mentoring. The following document describes the steps for bringing the program to your school: Bringing the Program to Your School.
In the District of Columbia, WABA staff deliver the program directly. Call us at 202-213-1459 or 202-628-2500 or email us at safetyed@waba.org to find a place on our schedule.
As part of our community outreach, WABA brings Safety Rodeos free of charge to events in both Maryland and DC. Call us at 202-213-1459 or 202-628-2500 or email us at safetyed@waba.org to find a place on our schedule. Click here for photos of the Watts Branch Park Kids Bike Rodeo in August 2004.
The Lance Armstrong Foundation asked WABA to deliver a Bike Safety Rodeo to the Bristol Meyers Squibb Tour of Hope event in October 2004. WABA was able to provide this service for a nominal fee, along with give-aways of literature and bike helmets. Call us at 202-213-1459 or 202-628-2500 or email us at safetyed@waba.org to find a place on our schedule.
Bike Rodeo is the term we use for a hands-on exercise using bikes and an obstacle course to teach kids the skills they need to safely stop and control their bikes. It can mean the bike handling lesson in the Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program, or a stand-alone event held when kids are not in school by a variety of organizations such as fire departments, police, and non-profits dedicated to children’s safety or bicycle safety. They can be run without the Program Trailer, using kids’ own bikes, or the trailer can be scheduled for a rodeo when kids are not in school. Using the information supplied here, you can create a rodeo yourself.
This one is for a weekend rodeo, where outdoor venue and more time permit the inclusion of more challenging and time-consuming elements such as the figure-eight and the "slow race", (a set of 3 foot-wide lanes permits several riders to start together and compete for the slowest time).
This is a more typical layout for the in-class setting, where 25 kids line up to share 8-10 bikes and practice their bike control for about 30 minutes. In most cases, the whole class can get through the course twice in this amount of time.
There should be at least two adults managing the bike-riding part of the Bicycle Safety Lessons. If you are running it alone, limit the number of bikes to two or three and make riders wait, so that you can help each rider on the course.
Ask beforehand if there are non-riders who would rather help the riders by replacing knocked-over cones and reminding them to signal turns and stop for an imaginary cross street. These helpers should take part in helmet fitting with the rest of the class before the rodeo section, but not all kids are ready to ride the course.
Dismounting and Remounting- this is the station where kids demonstrate whether they can ride bikes well enough to complete the course. It also serves to remind them of the location of the brakes, which differ on kids bikes. If you have kids who cannot ride well or at all and you are lucky enough to have enough help, it might be possible to teach bike riding in a separate area.