A growing number of Japanese children reach the middle years of elementary school without ever having ridden a bicycle, and a veteran cycling instructor says parents who keep them off bikes to avoid danger are making them less safe.
Fumitomo Yamaguchi, 67, a cycle adviser at the Bicycle Culture Center of the Japan Bicycle Promotion Institute, said the trend has built over the past five or six years. He hears it repeatedly from people involved in safety classes and bicycle promotion.
Children in the fourth and fifth grades who have never ridden a bike now turn up at safety classes, he said.
Yamaguchi, a longtime instructor at such classes, pointed to changes in how children play. Games and smartphones keep them indoors, and few want to go outside.
“In the past, older children naturally taught younger ones to ride within school and neighborhood groups. Those relationships have thinned, and now adults have to teach them.”Yamaguchi said, cycle adviser, Bicycle Culture Center
New rules for adult riders
Adults may also have been pushed away. A revised Road Traffic Act that took effect in April introduced blue traffic tickets — administrative fines — for bicycle violations by riders aged 16 and over.
Bicycles must generally use the roadway, except on sidewalks where riding is permitted. Children under 13 may ride on sidewalks.
“Parents really do struggle with the judgment of whether they ride on the road while their child rides on the sidewalk.”Yamaguchi said
Some parents may now find it a hassle to go out cycling with their children. Others are reluctant to put children on bikes at all, to avoid the risk of causing or suffering an accident.
At a children's cycling class held in Tokyo this autumn, a boy of elementary middle-school age resisted his mother throughout. She had brought him in the hope that he would learn to ride, but the feeling was not returned.
Instructors tried one approach after another to get the unwilling boy onto a bike, without success. His anger eventually turned on the instructor.
Yamaguchi warned that avoiding bicycles carries its own risk. Situations arise in which children need a bike as they grow older, and riding one for the first time without practice is more dangerous.