If you see a mom or a dad out braving the roads on bicycles with their children, please treat them as a group. Please do not utilize your automobile to drive a physical wedge into that supposedly cherished institution known as the American family. Adult bicyclists can be safely assumed to be individual units with individual responsibilities. Parents bicycling with their children are shepherding them along a road that you and your evil cohorts make dangerous.
The intersection of Bryant Street (aka Bicycle Boulevard) and University Ave, downtown Palo Alto. The mother was poised at a red light with her two children, ages 9 and 7. The light turned green. She encouraged her nine year old forward with her voice and then started pedaling with the younger one by her side. The only other car is coming from the opposite direction and wants to take a left, crossing in front of her. The nine year old has put a small amount of distance between herself and her mother. I can see the mother wanting to close the gap but she has the 7 year old who in the way of younger kids is still getting underway. The car, determined not to miss out on even a quarter of a second continues to roll forward adding to the mother's anxiety. The nine year old gets through the intersection and the car goes for it, cutting the mother and the 7 year old off from the older kid. I can see the mother looking ahead and wanting to be near her kid.
C'mon. It's a long light. Would it really have killed you to wait the additional three seconds for them to stay together? If you wouldn't run forward and grab a toddler and yank her off her mother's arm and toss her two streets forward so that the mother can run forward and retrieve her kid as if she were an over-sized Golden Retriever....then you shouldn't separate a mother and child traveling together on bicycles.
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