Pedalling to school could save lives

Do children still ride bicycles to school?

It’s been a long time since I last saw a child hurrying to school on a bicycle with a suitcase strapped to the back.

With the provincial government announcing that there is not enough money to launch its school transport programme, perhaps some money could be spent on cycle tracks and children encouraged to use them.

The norm these days is that cycling is mainly a sport and a trendy way to keep fit rather than a means of travelling from point A to point B.

When I was a child, admittedly before Methuselah was born, hundreds of children cycled to school. It was a lot cheaper than the bus, many parents did not own cars and minibus taxis were a far away nightmare. But even if my folks had wheels, I doubt very much that I would have been lifted to school.

Riding a bicycle also taught life skills which were needed to be self sufficient; how to fix a puncture being one of them. The problem with that though was as a spindly girl, pumping up the tyre so that it could be submerged in water to detect the air bubbles, was a Herculean task. Brothers are not usually very accommodating of hopeless little sisters.

School bikes had little racks at the back with sprung sides that kept a suitcase in place, some of them had a strap over the top (mine did not) which would secure the baggage firmly, and it did not take much practice to learn to ride with this weight on the back.

However the rack has its own built-in booby trap, which was usually triggered, as Murphy would have it, at a busy intersection which had to be negotiated. The rack was attached to the back wheel by means of rods and bolts. With much use the bolts would begin to loosen. Eventually the rack would topple backwards encouraged by the weight of the suitcase until the law of physics dictated that in the next few moments schoolgirl would be dodging cars, rescuing school books, files and of course, lamenting the loss of the day’s lunch, now plastered on the tar.

Admittedly traffic was not as hectic as it is today, but cars are lethal weapons, then and now, so children had to know their oats, until the cycle track leading to school was reached.

There was another, more scenic route to school through the park but the cars were the lesser of two evils; the other being the pervert who stood under the bridge over the river and flashed at schoolgirls on bicycles.

I know there are plans afoot in Durban to build cycle tracks along some major roads near the Umgeni River and the Moses Mabida Stadium to encourage a healthier lifestyle among Durban’s citizens.

But I do believe it is more important to build cycle paths near schools in residential areas both urban and rural.

The practice of transporting children on the back of bakkies has taken the lives of many young children. On Monday, eight people were injured, six of them school children, when a car and a bakkie were in a collision in Verulam . A 13-year-old girl was in a critical condition. This is but one petition of a litany of similar reports and it will not stop until the government takes the initiative to do something about this.

We are spending million upon million on palaces, surely we should be considering the children first? I am not suggesting that every child is able to ride to school, but there are schools which would be accessible by bicycle.

In some rural areas there are projects to provide bicycles to get to school and this should be investigated and extended as a means of lessening the burden on parents and saving lives.