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Three Rules for Smart, Safe Scooting
Here at Micro Kickboard we like to talk a lot about the benefits of riding Micro scooters, but more importantly, we like to talk about how to ride safely! As we celebrate National Scooter Day (May 19), promoting safe riding is the focus of our efforts. Last year we gave away 1000 helmets and the previous year we created the Micro Safety Video. This year we’ve created a Safety Poster for families and schools, one which distills the most important safety practices into 3 rules that are easy to remember, share and practice with children, downloadable here.
The funny thing about safety is how easy it is to follow some basic rules which together offer incredible protection - sort of like wearing a seat belt in the car. In fact, Car Safety rules provide a great parallel, because wearing a seat belt, controlling speed and avoiding distractions are widely known and practiced -- and they dramatically improve the odds of arriving home safely. Their equivalent exists in the world of scooter safety, for both children and adults:
Rule #1 - Practice the Helmet Habit!
Numero uno, of course, is wearing a helmet. By now, virtually every adult knows how important helmets are, and also how difficult it can be to make sure children wear them, consistently.
Developing a helmet habit requires determination and organization. The helmet habit has really taken hold in biking and skiing and it’s becoming the standard in scooting as well. As in skiing or biking, most scooter riders will never need the protection a helmet provides, but we take comfort in wearing them anyway, just in case we do.
Rule #2 - Ride Defensively! Teaching a child to ride ‘defensively’ is a good concept for them to start grasping at an early age. Although it's a big word for young children, big words can also be fun - kids know how smart they sound! Riding defensively really has two components - controlling speed and watching for cars.
Here's the best rule of thumb about Speed to teach and practice with children - if you are going too fast to hop off the scooter easily, you're going too fast and need to Slow Down! To slow down, teach children to apply the brake, or hop off! Being able to hop off is a major safety advantage of scooter riding - so make sure to teach your children to do that if they see something they're not sure about - the ground is only an inch or so away! Another aspect of defensive riding is to get off the scooter well before the corner, and if there's no crossing guard, teach them to look 3 times for cars - left, right and left again.
Rule #3 - Follow Local Traffic Rules - Every place is a little different, so it's important to learn the local rules and follow them. However there's some basic rules that apply everywhere - stop at crosswalks and walk across streets, follow stop signs and traffic lights and listen to adults who are in charge of safety!
As Micro’s partner in the USA, one of the things we love and appreciate most is how stable and safe the scooters themselves are. We embrace these safety practices as a way of maximizing fun and safety when riding Micro and we hope you find them, together with our Safety Video below, for kids and parents, helpful.
