Health & Fitness
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Bikes and toddler seats/trailers
I've been wanting to get a seat or trailer for my daughter for a while now. Does anyone recommend one over the other?
Also, my husband and I both have pretty nice road bikes from when we used to commute to/from work and I also have a hybrid bike. Is there a way to tell which of the bikes would support which options? I have a faint memory of someone telling us our road bikes couldn't hold a toddler seat.
Thanks for any advice!
Re: Bikes and toddler seats/trailers
I guess it depends on how old your DD is and if you are using for recreation only, but I used this one. My DD loved it and it gave me a good inner thigh workout!! Hope this helped and it's my first time doing a link so hopefully it worked!
JM
IF History in my Bio!
Southeastern Cycling
My Nest Bio and Cycling Advice
I agree with this. So much safer. When I use our rail-trail, it drives me BSC to see kids riding in these . I don't see how in the world they are safe, but if someone could educate me, it would make me feel much better!
Southeastern Cycling
My Nest Bio and Cycling Advice
From ages 1-3 we used a Chariot Cougar bike trailer nearly every day (we don't own a car). It offered a place for our daughter to sleep, and it also would have acted as a roll cage had an accident occurred. It's higher up off the ground than other trailers and narrow. We chose the orange color so that it would be highly visible (it also comes with an orange flag and glow in the dark fabric). We still use it occasionally for biking and constantly for jogging/walking. I would highly recommend the Chariot brand, but Burley and Croozer are also good brands. I would advise staying away from InStep and Schwinn because the construction is shoddy, the wheels are not that great and neither offers much in the way of comfort.
We've moved onto using a Madsen cargo bike for our every day purposes and absolutely adore it.
As far as seats, the Kettler Flipper bike seat can be quickly switched between bikes. I have friends that use it and switch off constantly. PeaPod is also a popular seat around here, but I don't feel like they are super comfortable for a child. Personally, I'm not comfortable with putting a child under the age of 2-2.5 in a seat because seats just don't offer as much support as a trailer.
A bike with a thin, light frame will not be able to hold a seat or pull a trailer. If you bring your bike into a local bike shop, they should be able to tell you if it will work or not with seats/trailers. They will also be able to fit your kiddo with the right helmet, which is important. If you go with a trailer, you will want a flat back helmet so that your child's head isn't pushed forward. We really love the Lazer brand because of that and because it was the only one that fit her for the longest time.
That's what we use. They are very safe, actually. The US doesn't have safety standards for front mounted seats, so it is a little hard to judge it on that basis, but for places that do have front mounted standards, it meets and exceeds standards.
From my personal experience, the front mounting makes the bike extremely easy to balance. Plus, I can watch my son when we bike so I know if he is in distress, if something is troubling him, or if he is at all uncomfortable. We have put many, many miles on with that bike seat and we've loved every minute of it.
I understand why Trailors are deemed safer but I have yet to find any extensive data proving so. for us we bike on city streets and I felt uncomfortable with something out of the line of site of a driver. No the flag above does not make me feel any better.
We have a yepp mini seat personally.
Before we started to ride I read a couple of blogs: totcycle, carefree Cambridge, and family ride.
My trailer is extremely visible, and cars usually give me a wide berth when I am out with that or with our cargo bike. But, it is bright orange, glows in the dark, has a bright orange flag and we have flashing lights. It also sits up higher off the ground than other brands of trailers.
We also bike in the city, and I tried biking with a seat. It made me highly uncomfortable because cars did not give me any space, and I was nervous about getting into an accident.
A front-riding seat would make me even more nervous because of the lack of shell encasing the child and because a car would never be able to tell that a child was on the bike with me.
If it works for you, that's great. I'm all about what works for each individual person. It truly depends on where you live as well. In Chicago, a seat is not as safe as a trailer or cargo bike.