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Grades 6–8 · Getting Around Without a Car · Badge 1

Brakes, tyres, lights, battery

Run a ninety-second pre-ride check, and know which result means you do not ride today.

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Step 1 of 10

1Look

Ninety seconds by the door

Still image

The check

An e-bike leaning by a front door, a kid crouched at the front wheel squeezing the brake lever, a charger cable on the hall floor behind them.

You already do a version of this. You notice a flat tyre. This makes it deliberate, and adds the things you would not notice.

2The idea

What a check is for

It is not about finding something wrong. Most days you will not. It is so that the day the front brake is soft, you find out by the door and not at the bottom of the hill.

Four things, always the same order: brakes, tyres, lights, battery. Brakes first because they are the one that can end the ride. Battery last because it is the one you can most easily live with.

3The steps

How to do each one

Brakes: squeeze each lever hard. It should stop with a finger’s gap before the grip. Spin the wheel, squeeze: it should stop dead.
Tyres: press with a thumb. It should barely give. Look for anything stuck in the tread.
Lights: switch both on and look at them.
Battery: read it. Enough to get there and back, with a quarter spare.

Say each word as you do it. The saying is what stops you skipping one when you are late.

4Worked example

Tuesday, by the door

Brakes: back lever fine. Front lever pulls nearly to the grip and the wheel keeps spinning. Tyres fine. Lights fine. Battery at 70. Seventy seconds.

One thing found, and it is the one that ends the ride. The bike goes back in the hall. A parent hears about it before school, not after. Bus or walk today. The check did not find a problem. It found a problem before it became one.

5Your turn

The pre-ride list

Interactive

The pre-ride list

Four items appear one at a time on a drawing of the bike. Tap the part, do the check, and the item ticks. A timer runs with ninety seconds as the target.

Do it in the same order every time. Order is what makes it fast.

6Decide

Front brake pulls almost to the grip. You are already late.

Right. Late is a problem you solve with a phone. On most bikes the front brake does most of the stopping, and an e-bike needs all of it. A brake that is not there is not a careful-riding problem.
This is the one that matters. The front brake does most of the work of stopping a bike. Without it you have a fast, heavy machine with roughly half its stopping, on top of the distances from the first lesson. Late is cheaper.

Pick one to carry on.

7The idea

A stop, or a note

Some findings end the ride. Stop: a brake that fails the check. A tyre that is soft and will not hold air. No working lights when it is dark or getting dark.
Note: a scratch. A battery that is lowish for a short trip. A missing bell, though get one.

If you are not sure which pile something goes in, it goes in the stop pile until an adult says otherwise. That is the whole rule.

8Find them

Which of these mean you do not ride today?

Tap the ones that count.

Find all 3.

9Say it

The list, in order

Say the list in your normal voice

“Brakes, tyres, lights, battery.”

Say it in the same order every time and you will not skip one when you are in a hurry.

10Do it

Before you leave this page

Go and run the four checks on your bike right now, and time it. Then tell a parent one thing you found, even if it is that everything was fine and it took eighty seconds.

Tick it when you have done it.

Lesson done.

Brakes, tyres, lights, battery. Ninety seconds by the door. If the brakes fail the check, the ride is off.

Next lesson: Passengers and the load

Badge 1 · The Machine

1.1It is not a bicycle1.2Helmets, properly1.3Brakes, tyres, lights, battery1.4Passengers and the load★Badge Challenge

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