15,000 children

Every fifth child passes bike test twice

Cycling needs to be practiced.

(Bild: ÖJRK/Johannes Brunnbauer)

Around 15,000 schoolchildren in Upper Austria are currently training and learning for their first driving license. Whether they can proudly show it off is almost exclusively down to their parents - but not because the subject matter is so difficult. It is striking that there are strong regional differences.

Children need to be able to handle the bike, then 99 percent of them will pass the cycling test. But parents are responsible for learning to ride a bike. Not the school, not us police officers." - Chief Inspector Nikolaus Koller and his 366 colleagues from the police traffic education department currently have their hands full: around 15,000 primary school fourth-graders are currently training for their cycling test. "This is the first step towards personal mobility," says Petra Riener, Head of Road Safety at the ÖAMTC in Upper Austria, who advises parents to practise with children from an early age - from the age of a balance bike: "The main thing is for children to master their bike, to be able to keep their balance."

Mastery is important
"We get the traffic signs and the relevant legal matters right in class," says Chief Inspector Koller, who "crams" the theory with his colleagues, but gets annoyed when girls and boys can't ride straight ahead or one-handed at the age of ten. "Not being able to control the bike is the main reason for failing, because it provokes other mistakes. The children are then so focused on riding that they don't notice the surroundings, such as a stop sign," says Koller, and: "We know after 20 meters whether a child can ride a bike or not. If they are a danger to themselves or others, we can't let them through. Driving licenses are not simply handed out. But every child also gets a second chance," says the police officer.

Requiring children to take the test but having no interest in teaching them how to cycle - that doesn't go together.

Nikolaus Koller, oberster Verkehrserzieher

Only one district with a "white flag"
It is striking that the vast majority of children pass the test in rural areas - here the bike is more important for becoming independent of "mom's cab". There is a wide range: in Eferding, all pupils passed the test last year - at least at the second attempt - while in Wels, one in five also failed at the second attempt. "For children, the role in road traffic, from pedestrian to cyclist, is an important step," says Provincial Councillor for Infrastructure Günter Steinkellner (FP), hoping that the failure rate will fall this year.