Via: BikeBiz.com

Bromley’s senior road safety officer Andy Mills doesn’t want anybody to think that Calderdale’s RSO is “a typical road safety officer.” Mills calls him “archaic” for writing a press release warning parents about buying “killer bikes” for Christmas.

Peter Shepherdson issued an official Calderdale MBC press release asking can there be “any bigger killer and crippler of children than the humble bicycle?”

In the release, Shepherdson said 74 local children had been hit by vehicles in the past five years yet directed his ire not at motorists but at the parents who buy bicycles for their children, equating cycling with allowing children to play with knives or fire.

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So the answer to children getting hit by motorists is to not buy bikes for them ever again? How about policing the areas where the children are being hit. How about major consequences for those motorists who hit a child? Or maybe, this is just me thinking, you provide the children with a safe place to ride in the city. Now I’m not saying that the parents are not at all to blame for this, they have a duty as parents to make sure their children are safe and not riding their bikes in the street. But just not purchasing bikes is a very extreme way to deal with this problem.