UK Study: Children with cycle training will ride more often

Children in a cargo bike in Bonython Park, Adelaide. 

A UK study has found that those who take "Bike-ability training" use their bicycles more frequently than untrained children of the same age. 


That's right,  teach kids the right skills and they're more likely to get on their bike. It's not rocket science but many children don't learn these skills whilst at school. 

This particular study was based on a survey of 224 children in four Cambridge primary schools. The survey had some impressive results. 

"Bikeability training leads to an uplift of 12.6 percent in the amount of children who cycle to school," according to online British newspaper, BikeBiz. 

The study also showed that training also leads to an 11 percent increase in the amount of cycling children do with their families away from school

Coming back to Adelaide, South Australia, we believe that every child should have access to bicycle education.

"This education provides life long skills," Bicycle SA CEO, Christian Haag told the media last week. 

Bicycle SA's Education Team

"The kids learn really valuable skills in the sense of judging speed and distance of on road traffic and clearly what we're seeing is these skills translate through life to when they get behind the wheel of a car."

Australia sees only 2% of children riding their bicycle to school compared to a whopping 50% in the Netherlands. 

70% of parents still find the biggest barrier to getting on a bike is concern for children's safety. Making children aware of the environment around them, coupled with some improvement in infrastructure would go along way in getting more kids cycling. 

Let's try to bridge that gap in the future. 

Bicycle SA is Australia's largest provider of specialist child and adult bicycle education services, annually servicing more than 5,000 South Australians. Whether it be from primary school to tertiary institutions or one-on-one adult needs to encouraging workplaces, Bicycle SA has a range of education and training options to suit. Find out more about our work here.