In Jackson Heights, Kids Learn About Bike Safety and Document Speeding

5:01 PM EDT on September 15, 2014

On Saturday, Make Queens Safer kicked off the school year with a safe streets fair at Travers Park in Jackson Heights, next to the 78th Street play street. DOT distributed 723 bike helmets, more than half of them to children, and 70 kids swapped out their old bikes for right-sized models provided by Recycle-A-Bicycle. Hundreds of kids also participated in learn-to-ride classes from Bike New York and had their bicycles repaired by the Bike Yard.

At the event, Make Queens Safer hosted a "kid engineers" traffic study, where local students used speed guns on traffic along 34th Avenue. The students documented speeding, red light running, and near-collisions. They found that up to 17 percent of drivers were speeding, with a maximum observed speed of 41 mph.

Council Member Daniel Dromm was one of the adults supervising the kids performing the study. “I applaud Make Queens Safer for putting together this important event," he said in a statement. “Providing the tools and knowledge on how to safely navigate the streets of our neighborhoods can help reduce accidents and improve the quality of life for all members of our community.”

Can't get enough bike events for kids? Join Kidical Mass for its September ride along five miles of the Brooklyn waterfront, starting at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. An RSVP on Facebook is requested.

Stephen Miller

In spring 2017, Stephen wrote for Streetsblog USA, covering the livable streets movement and transportation policy developments around the nation. From August 2012 to October 2015, he was a reporter for Streetsblog NYC, covering livable streets and transportation issues in the city and the region. After joining Streetsblog, he covered the tail end of the Bloomberg administration and the launch of Citi Bike. Since then, he covered mayoral elections, the de Blasio administration's ongoing Vision Zero campaign, and New York City's ever-evolving street safety and livable streets movements.

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