Safe cycling

Safe Cycling Skills - A statistical investigation

Question: Are Karoro School senior students safe cyclists on the roads?

Recently Room One students participated in a safe cycling skills programme facilitated
by the New Zealand Police.

Jos came into our classroom to teach us the road rules. We had three session the
first session was in the classroom where we had to learn how to wear a helmet properly.
To wear a helmet properly you have to make sure you have a space between your
helmet and your eyebrows which should be the size of your two fingers in between them.
 We got taught that with a helmet on the straps near your ear there is a clip that has
to be below your ears and the chin strap has to be against you chin so that you helmet
does not move. He also taught us in the first session what the road signals are.
If you want to turn left you would put your left hand out for three seconds then put
both hand on the handle bar so when you turn you do not fall off and if you would like
to turn right you put your right hand out for 3 seconds put your hands on the handles
and turn. Finally to stop you put your right hand  up and make a stop signal with you
hand for three seconds

and you use your right hand because the driver can see it easier because they
sit in the right seat.

The second session involved a skills based on the court.
On the court Jos set up many obstacles for us we had to go around the court
while going around the court we had to go through cones making sure not to hit
them as we turn our heads to see what the picture was then we had to signal at the
conner and swerve through cones after that we had to bike over a ladder.
Jos made us swerve around the cones and go over the ladder to see how well our
balance was.

Following the court session students participated in a road circuit skills session.
There were people placed around the circuit and marks were given for using the
following skills: Being approx 1 metre from the kerb, scanning hazards, checking
parked cars, look behind before hand signals, correct hand signal, look behind after
hand signal.

The last session was out on the road. On the road we went down tasman street then
turn left  up wilson crescent and came back down wilson crescent then we turned left
again down warburton street then turn right on domain terrace after that  turn right
again onto miro street then took a right on to tasman street and back to where we
started. We all got marked on how well we did on the road.

My marks were:

Approx 1 metre from kerb	Scanning for hazards	Checking parked cars	Look behind before hand signals	Correct hand signal	Look behind after hand signals	% Average Across Skills
5/5	2/2	4/4	4/6	6/6	6/6	79%

One of the collated graphs showed these results.  I think that this shows I need to work on

looking before hand signals.

My recommendation is that Karoro School does more than one session a year so we can get more practice
on the road.