Badge Kids › Road Badge

Ages 11-16 · One badge · 8 sections · 44 lessons

Road Badge

Eight sections for e-bikes and e-scooters. The machine itself, being seen, control and braking, junctions and cars, shared paths and the people on them, and the choices that actually get riders hurt.

Section 1 · Fit to Ride

5 lessons · about 40 min
  1. Fit to ride, before you touch the machine
  2. The helmet
  3. The phone, the music and your ears
  4. Why this is harder at fourteen than at forty
  5. Riding when you are not right

Section 2 · Know Your Machine

6 lessons · about 45 min
  1. The three questions that tell you what you are riding
  2. What a throttle changes
  3. The weight, the speed and the stop
  4. Making it fit you
  5. The check before you ride
  6. The battery and the charger

Section 3 · In the Empty Lot

6 lessons · about 50 min
  1. Somewhere with no cars in it
  2. Setting off from a standstill
  3. The stop, and the pedal you leave behind
  4. Riding a straight line, which is harder than it sounds
  5. Slow control: the weave and the box
  6. The squeeze, and the corner

Section 4 · Look Behind, Ride Straight

5 lessons · about 45 min
  1. Why looking back makes you swerve
  2. The drill that proves you actually looked
  3. Riding one-handed without going anywhere
  4. The glance, the check and the stare
  5. Look, signal, see them respond, then move

Section 5 · You Are Traffic

6 lessons · about 55 min
  1. You are traffic, and here is the sentence that says so
  2. The two positions, and both of them have names
  3. Control and release, which has the give-back in the name
  4. The rule everybody quotes in half
  5. Four feet, and whose offence a dooring is
  6. Junctions, both left turns, and the strategy that comes last

Section 6 · Where You Are Allowed

5 lessons · about 50 min
  1. Four surfaces, and none of them have one answer
  2. Why the sidewalk measures out as the dangerous one
  3. The rule changes at a line you cannot see
  4. Lights, and the half of it everybody has backwards
  5. How to find your own rule, which is a skill

Section 7 · Paths and People

5 lessons · about 45 min
  1. The person you hit is hurt worse than you are
  2. Keep right, pass left, and the half everybody skips
  3. The speed on the sign, and the speed for right now
  4. People do not travel in straight lines
  5. Six of you is a different vehicle

Section 8 · When It Goes Wrong

6 lessons · about 55 min
  1. Why this is the last badge and not the first
  2. The quick stop, and the pedals that are not where you think
  3. Two different ways round a thing
  4. You get one of them, not both
  5. The dog, and two manuals that disagree
  6. Gravel, grates, rails, and the last skill in the course

Start with section 1

Every riding course ever written starts with the rider and not the machine. Not because the machine does not matter – the whole of the next badge is the machine – but because a rider who is not right tonight does not get rescued by a bike that is. This badge is you: the four questions, the helmet, your hands and your ears, and the reason all of this is genuinely harder at fourteen than at forty.

Open Fit to Ride

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