jon c. 

We were not allowed to ride bikes to school in the seventies, so banning them is also tradition. I believe we were precluded from doing so as the schools didn't wish to deal with all the inevitable thefts. Of course we weren't allowed to drive either as there wasn't anywhere to park. They couldn't, of course, prevent biking or parking to an off campus spot, but there wasn't really anywhere you could lock a bike where it wouldn't be stolen.

ironwood

What do you expect; half of American adults are sedentary and their children will also be. If parents want to turn their kids into round little butterballs with atrophied legs, its their choice

wphamilton

In this one case at least, getting kids to school can be one of the biggest challenges of LCF so it isn't really being ignored here. I explained why the amount of traffic at the school, the behavior of drivers, and the policies implemented by the school were all impediments.

While I agree with wolfchild that parents should have the right to decide how their kids get to school, that's not always the case unless their choice is driving them. Parents should also rightly expect that the school will reasonably accommodate their choices or at least not hinder them arbitrarily.

noglider 

The perception of danger of traffic is a big reason parents drive their kids to school. By using the word perception, I don't mean to say there is no danger. Certainly there is danger. But it's not quite the danger parents tend to think it is. I read an amazing statistic a few years ago, and I wish I could find a citation again. It said that of the kids who walk or ride their bikes to school and get hit by cars, half of them are hit by cars driven by parents driving their kids to school. So this means that by trying to avoid danger, they ARE the danger they think they are avoiding.

tandempower

I hear so often now crimes like vandalism and theft being accepted as inevitabilities. I'm surprised people put up with these fundamental violations of personal freedom without standing up to them. A few decades ago people started talking about minimum mandatory sentencing and three-strikes-your-out laws. Those are very harsh but maybe there's no other way to get these ridiculously stubborn trends of vandalism and theft to subside.

jon c. 

It isn't actually any more dangerous than it ever was, and that danger is exceedingly remote. But parents I knew over the years who fully understood that admitted they were still terrified. And some of these folks are people who rode NY subways by themselves when they were pre-teens. They know the fear is irrational, but they can't overcome it. Cultural forces are strong. Around here, a lot of parents in suburban developments don't even let their kids walk through the development to wait for the bus at the main road. They drive their kids the quarter mile or so and sit in a small line of cars waiting for the bus to arrive. That same line of cars is there in the afternoon waiting to pick the kids up. I feel sorry for the kids and am glad I grew up in an era where we were substantially unsupervised from a young age.

tandempower

Makes you wonder what the connection is between automotive culture and the culture of fear, insecurity, and protection. Two sides of the same coin, maybe?

jon c. 

We've pretty much tried that without success. The social and economic costs of jailing people for minor crimes far outweigh any perceived benefit. And we have conclusively demonstrated that as a society we are incapable of eliminating racial bias in the criminal justice system, so such laws always disproportionately impact select groups of citizens. The US jails a higher percentage of its population than any other nation. It's very expensive and provides little in the way of rehabilitation. It's time to seek other answers. And as most petty thievery is done by teens, we have to recognize that jailing them is more likely to turn them into career criminals than alternative methods.

tandempower

But then someone like M155 can become the spokeperson for authoritarian repression of LCF by posting that school principals have the authority to prohibit bicycles and justify it by theft/vandalism because no one is willing to stand up to it. If people who choose alternatives to driving are being bullied by vandals and thieves, at what point do you take it as a form of cultural-economic bullying instead of just being random petty crime? Or do you just let everyone who wants to choose alternative transportation get bullied out of doing so in this way?

edit: actually, I am just reacting to the same ridiculous fear here and perpetuating the chain. If you take a step back, I am talking about increasing police and law enforcement to protect kids' bikes parked at a school during school hours. That's insane. Whatever principal prohibited bikes at school using this lame excuse is obviously just doing so out of some twisted hate for bikes. Who goes onto school grounds during school hours to steal or vandalize bikes except kids themselves, and if kids are doing it, it is not hard for a teacher to be a monitor in that area when kids are swarming the bike racks.

I-Like-To-Bike

To be a bit more accurate, you are just over-thinking/over-reacting to your own troll thread. Nothing new (or LCF related) to see here.

tandempower

No, it is really interesting what happened in this thread. M155 described a situation where a school principal prohibited bikes because of theft. Then I reacted to the specter of bike-theft during school hours to call for more law enforcement. Then when someone else claimed that nothing could be done about it, I started to feel that prohibiting bikes at school during school hours was inevitable. That is a chain of insanity that formed based on the foundational assumption that a school principal should legitimately prohibit bikes on campus during school hours because of theft. Who steals a bike from a school while the kids are in school? That's crazy.

I-Like-To-Bike

Getting kids ANYWHERE can be one of the biggest challenges of LCF. Presumably discussing ANYTHING related to getting anywhere, for any purpose, by any means is an "LCF" issue; presumably anything mentioning Carnival Cruises, airplane trips, cross country vacations, mountain climbing, bar hopping with buddies, etc. are more of the same kid challenged "LCF" issues.

wolfchild

A lot of people would like to stand up to it and do something about it but the problem is our legal system prevents them from doing so. It seems that our justice system is more interested in protecting criminals than protecting innocent law abiding citizens. The sentences which judges give out to criminally minded people are just not harsh enough.

tandempower

Right, but this is all based on the specter of bike thefts on a school campus during school hours. Do you really think that's a problem?

wolfchild

I don't know how many bikes are stolen or vandalized on school campuses, but I think any student who vandalises or steals another persons property while on school property should be suspended from that school.

cooker

It's not "so-called", it's a large and predictable effect. I live amidst a cluster of schools and parents with cars create all kinds of hassle twice a day. It's worse for my wife as she might be trying to drive to and from the house in the midst of it and can't get in or out. It's only a minor annoyance to me as I am usually not home at those times, but occasionally if I am going into work a bit late, and have to bike through the chaos it creates a bit of an impediment.

The most ridiculous situation is once a year when the kids go off on trips for a week on a collection of coach buses, and when they are due home, waiting parents park on both sides of the street in front to the school literally blocking the school buses from arriving and parking. It's like the kids can go on a school trip to Ottawa but they can't walk half a block to the parental car.

It's not a barrier to LCF, more of an observation on how bizarre and extreme our society's car dependence really is.

cooker

Yes, they are interrelated. For example in areas where most people drive, there are few or no adults or even other kids on the sidewalk who might intervene to stop a kid being abducted or just get a license plate or description, so that makes parents more worried about the kids being vulnerable.

jon c. 

That may be the case in some situations. But at the time and place I went to HS, it was a reasonable decision based on the circumstances. We live in an imperfect world and we do have to make accommodations. In theory, we should be able to walk any public street at any time of the day or night without fear. But that's not a reasonable expectation. It would require a high level of authoritarianism to make that possible and that's a trade off I wouldn't be willing to make. It would in my view be trading greater freedom for the illusion of greater freedom. And such societies invariably end up with greater degrees of enforced social conformity. As much as you may think this society discourages following your own drummer, it is actually much more amenable to that than is often the case.

In any case, I think the discussion is somewhat academic today. At least from what I see, there are relatively few kids today who want to ride bikes. And relatively few parents who want their kids to ride to school. I don't think prohibition by the powers that be is a major factor. We would have ridden bikes to school if we could because we rode everywhere. Maybe in part because our parents weren't about to drive us everywhere and we wanted to be anywhere but in the house. Kids today seem happy to be more housebound while interacting with the rest of the world electronically. I don't know if that's going to change any time soon.

Mobile 155

TheLibrarian

Maybe i'm out at a different time but I see fewer people waiting at the end of their driveway in their suvs for the bus though maybe its just summer now. And yes kids are coddled today, urban congestion makes it less safe to ride to school, kids being abducted and/ or distances to school in many suburban/ rural areas.

noglider 

Those laws don't help, and they hurt. Read Malcolm Gladwell's book David and Goliath where he explains it. There are ways to combat crime, and we are using them, and crime is down now, if you haven't noticed. Wait, why haven't you noticed?

Another fear parents have is abduction, and that kind of crime is also substantially lower now. Yet fear of it is higher.

tandempower

Is this entire post to justify a principal deciding to prohibit bikes from a high school while at the same time calling it not authoritarian to do so? That's insane. Can you imagine a principal allowing high schoolers to drive and park at school but not ride bikes and park those? The day that policy choice passes without raising eyebrows is a sad day for LCF and liberty more generally.

tandempower

Maybe, but what happens is that people get fed up with crime and not being able to control it, so they accept draconian measures that may not actually help, but they are more like a temper tantrum against their inability to control the problems. Eventually, people start to get the message and the crime subsides or the collective temper tantrum keeps getting worse. Sad that it comes to that, but surely you see how it is a natural progression from bad to worse?

noglider 

No, people don't get the message. Suffering increases. Yes, I understand how we can come to believe that more severe measures reduces crime, but I prefer to be rational and look at facts. Not everyone is rational.

cooker

Probably they can prohibit bikes on school property, but I'm not sure they have any authority if the kids park their bikes off the grounds.