Our family is so excited for Spring and Summer. In the great state of Washington, when the warmer weather is upon us, we love to get outside and exercise together. What better way to exercise as a family then to ride bikes together? My 5 year old has a goal this summer – ride her bike without training wheels! {Tips on how to ride without training wheels is going to be a future post for sure.}
So with family bike rides comes the importance of bike safety. I’d love to share with you my readers, our family bike safety tips:
- Wear a properly fitted bicycle helmet. It should sit snugly and sit flat on the top of your head without wiggling around. The chin strap should fit no more than 1 or 2 fingers underneath it.
- Keep bicycle tires inflated.
- Check brakes before a family bike ride. Make sure they work properly.
- Wear bright clothing or even reflective clothing.
- Go with the flow of traffic, not against it.
- Obey traffic laws, but children under 10 should ride on the sidewalk. They are not able to remember all the traffic laws. Make sure sidewalk riding is allowed in the town or city you live in.
- Avoid riding your bicycle at night especially with children.
- Stay alert! Stop at the corners of sidewalks and streets with young children and walk your bike across the intersection.
- Don’t let the kids listen to headphones.
- Stay away from high traffic areas.
What bike safety tips does your family follow?
We travel a lot for work. Sometimes we fly to our locations (like this time in Arkansas), but other times we drive. Now that my Princess is getting older and learning to ride her bike we are thankful we can take our bikes. We have a Thule Parkway Bike Rack and we LOVE it!
So easy to install to the hitch, the Thule Parkway Bike Rack is the perfect addition to our traveling family. I love that we can fit 4 bikes on it. That will be just the right fit for our family of 4 when my Little Man gets to the age of being able to ride a bike. (I want a balance bike for him when he is 2!) The cradles are padded so they won’t nick your bike’s paint job which is a big plus!
I also love that you can move the Thule Parkway Bike Rack down so access to your back end is available. That is so important when driving around with a family of four. We can unpack vehicle when we are traveling across the country, or if we are home in Washington we can easily get our our coats and lunch.
Simply pull the pin and lower the bike rack.
The Thule Parkway Bike Rack mounts right to 1 1/4″ or 2″ receivers. You can pick from either the 2-bike (Thule 958) or 4-bike (Thule 957 and Thule 956) rack. Thule includes a ratcheting tie-down strap for more secure travels. All hardware is included for quick assembly.
What’s more, Thule builds your Parkway Bike Rack in the USA and backs it with a Lifetime Warranty.
This is the time of year to go outside and take a family bike ride. If you need a bike rack for your vehicle, our family highly recommends the Thule Parkway Bike Rack. It is easy to install, holds up to 4 bikes, protects your bikes, allows you to open your back end, is made in the USA, and has a lifetime warranty! What more could you ask for?
Get your Thule Parkway Bike Rack from AutoAnything today!
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Disclosure: I was sent the above product for review. All opinions are mine alone.
Ahh, I cannot WAIT for spring to get here!!! Still snow on the ground here 🙁 Great tips, I need to get my 3yo a helmet this year because he’ll definitely be riding around! Would love to see your tips on riding without training wheels 🙂
Thanks Emily. Now that we have our bike rack we will be bringing out bikes when we travel. We will really be working on no training wheels with our Princess too. She is 5 and it is time!
This is amazing! I need one if these for my mini vans
Yes, we are actually going to use it on our Toyota Mini Van since that is what we travel in we just have to install our hitch. We LOVE it!
Great tips! I was a huge bike rider as a child. After school I’d just hop on that bike and go… so much fun!
I did the same thing Jamie. I was on my bike with my sister daily. I loved just riding back and forth on our street.
The fact you can still open the lift gate and access the back of the vehicle makes this a total win. Well that and the fact it holds FOUR bikes!
Right? I love it! I am so glad we have it for travel and family bike rides. Even locally, there are spots I can wait to visit this spring and summer!
we always make sure to have the helment on and if we are riding on pathways we make sure our daughter stays on the right hand side so she dosent hit other runner, walkers or bikers.
Keeping your child on the right hand side is a great idea! Thanks for adding that tip! I appreciate it.
Bike rack looks great! These are great tips, thanks for sharing them
The Thule bike rack is great, and I love that Auto Anything offers free shipping! Internet shopping with free shipping is so important to our family!
We always wear helmets, and thanks to our BoyScout meeting that had officers come in and teach we know how to properly fit their helmets.
I think it is so great that officers did that for your boys Scout meeting. Thanks for sharing! Helmets are so important. I cringe every time I see kids riding without helmets!
I was just asking my husband when we were going to get our bikes down for the first ride of the year. But we realized that the kids wouldn’t comfortably fit in our bike trailer anymore so we’re looking at other options. And we’d love to take our bikes to the beach or park so this would be awesome to have!
Yes, Danielle, if we lived in SoCal we’d be out on our bikes a lot more often! Love the San Diego area! 🙂
Love our Thule bike rack. we dont use it enough…thanks for the tips too
You are welcome, Maria! Thank you for stopping by!
We haven’t gotten bikes for the kids yet. I think this is the year for them to start learning. Great tips.
We are committed to teaching our Princess to ride without training wheels. This will be the summer 😉
This is awesome. I am pinning it so I remember to get this as my kids get older. 🙂
I cringe every time I see a child riding a bike without a helmet. I like that this rack will hold up to 4 bikes – great for a larger family!
Great tips! We have the bikes, but we haven’t really taught our bigger kids how to ride. I think that might be a goal for this summer since we have a trailer for the baby and bikes for the big kids!
That’s pretty cool. We plan on getting bikes for all of us soon and would love to take them with us on vacations and to the trails, thanks for sharing.