Learning to Be Mobile: Children in/on Bikes in a Pro-Biking Environment

As an antidote to the fixation with automobility, cycling and other such highly mobile ‘carbon neutral’ leisure activities are the focus of recent studies that use mobile ‘travelling with’ methods such as the ‘ride along’ or headcam POV video technology with post-ride debriefing. Much of this creative cyclomobility research focuses on adult cycling or more extreme sports, such as BMX trials or mountain biking. There is, however, little qualitative research to date on family bike rides, eg. how children learn to sit in or ride a bike and how parents or caregivers talk and interact with children to instruct them in how to ride safely and to construct the moral order of the road in situ. Moreover, much research conducted in the US/UK depicts a hostile urban environment for bikes, in which bikers must navigate a dangerous, car-centred roadscape.
This paper reports on a preliminary investigation of two types of bike-rider-passenger ‘mobile with’ configurations typical in urban settings of bike-friendly Denmark. First, the rider who rides with a child in their front loaded transport/carrier tricycle. Second, the rider who rides with a child while they ride their own bike. Both take place in urban areas predominantly on separate bike lanes, with bike-only traffic lights at intersections for example. The analysis will be illustrated with clips comprising multi-angle video recordings of the two types of bike rides. After several experiments, more than one video camera was necessary to capture audio and visual features of the local organisation of the ride from the participants’ perspective(s). In addition, new ways to represent (in transcript form) specific features of the sensefulness of riding together were developed, eg. the relative mobility of different actors while doing ‘being mobile’. Several phenomena are presented and discussed: 1) riding/talk formations; 2) stretchy participation frameworks; 3) navigating static and moving obstacles; 4) situated noticings: 5) learning safe riding; and 6) negotiating the appropriate road conduct of other road users.