Smart Cycling : Teach kids to ride, give them helmets, and they’re ready for the road, right? <i> Wrong.</i> They need safety rules, too.

There he was, still wet from the ocean, gliding along on his beach cruiser bicycle, enjoying about as fine a day as a 14-year-old surfer can.

The waves had been good. The morning sun was bright. The breeze was gentle.

Now if only he had noticed the stop sign. Or the two police officers sitting half a block away.

“Oh, please, sir, don’t give me a ticket,” the high school freshman begged after Huntington Beach Police Officer Bert Adkins waved him over and pulled out his citation book. “I’ll do anything.”

What the young cyclist will do if he wants to avoid the fine or court appearance for running a stop sign is attend a bicycle traffic school. With a parent. On a Saturday morning, no less.

A lot of fuss over a wayward bicyclist? Not at all, say safety experts who study childhood injuries. Any time a child or young teen-ager enters a street or driveway, whether by foot or bicycle, there is no such thing as too much caution, the experts add.

Bicycle injuries are the leading cause of serious injuries in children ages 5 to 14, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, say. Pedestrian injuries are the leading cause of preventable death in children 4 to 8. More than half the victims are boys, the National Safety Council says.

California’s much-publicized helmet law is expected to reduce injuries, but even helmets can’t prevent the accidents that get children into trouble in the first place.

The specific accidents vary by age group, but researchers list the same underlying causes: overestimating a kid’s street smarts and physical abilities.

Studies have found that many parents agree that 6-year-olds aren’t capable of crossing a street alone, yet allow their own 6-year-olds to cross the street because they are, of course, responsible kids.

“It’s the Lake Wobegon effect,” said Linda Tracy, project manager for the Bicycle Federation of America. “You always think that your child is above average.”

And bikes are sold in toy stores, after all. But how many toys share the road?

“We spend quite a bit of time teaching them how to ride a bike and how to get going, but then we forget to teach them the safety rules with it. They are not little adults,” said Diane Winn, associate director of UC Irvine’s Pediatric Injury Prevention Research Group.

“When you think about it, we don’t allow other people to go out into the street and interact with traffic until they’re 16 years of age and have passed a course.”

Winn’s studies have found that preteens are as likely to be injured as preschoolers. The scenarios are certainly different, but the arena is the same--the neighborhood.

“We all feel comfortable in our own immediate neighborhood. We need this to function. You can’t always be worrying about your safety. There’s a natural letdown in our own environment in the way we supervise our children,” Winn said.

*

The same character traits that help children learn about their world--spontaneity and curiosity--are also their greatest pitfalls in street safety, she added. “They’re curious. They’re exploring. We overestimate how they’ll behave.”

But behaving, or minding rules and heeding parental harangues, is only part of what is required. At various ages, it is simply impossible for a child to master all the skills needed to safely cross a street or maneuver a bicycle past deceivingly quiet driveways. It’s like asking a 2-year-old to hold a pencil steady and print his name. It just can’t be done.

The best prevention is for parents to know what children can and can’t do at various ages, safety experts say. They offer specific guidelines:

* Time and distance are fuzzy concepts for preschoolers. They forget to “come right back” or get easily distracted and go squeak-squeak-squeaking away on their tricycles because they think home must just be another house away.

“We get a lot of kids who get lost on their Big Wheels,” said Adkins, the police officer. “We find them two hours later two miles from the house. God knows how many driveways they’ve crossed or how many streets they’ve crossed.”

Parents are advised to stick with them.

* Kids 5 and 6 years old can’t be taught to safely cross a street, Winn said. They don’t have the full field of vision that adults have. Moreover, they can’t master the synchronization--stopping, looking, listening, watching and looking again--required to get across a street.

Most likely, though, they are hit because they have decided to zip over to visit a friend they’ve just spotted or have darted out for a ball. The decisions are made on a whim. Kids can’t shift from play mode to street alertness.

Front-yard play should be supervised and streets should be made off-limits without exception.

* Children 7 and older usually can handle crossing in crosswalks if they have learned how from parents, Winn said. The American Bicycle Federation says children 9 and older can begin bicycling in the streets, if they’ve had proper training.

School and police department safety programs are helpful, but parents also need to teach, drill and test their children. Cross streets together at least 100 times before you let a child try it solo. Bicycle the route to school or soccer practice together. What might be simple on foot can be much more complicated on a bike, Adkins said.

“One of the biggest mistakes is not sitting down with the children and showing them safe routes to school,” Adkins said. “If (parents) check the routes, they’ll find out there are a lot of hazards along the way.”

The best bet is practice, practice and more practice.

* Finally, enforce the rules, Adkins said. He helped start Huntington Beach’s bicycle citation and traffic school program six years ago in response to a high number of juvenile bike accidents in the city. It’s not all crime and punishment. Prizes are given to kids “caught doing something right.”

But violators are ticketed. With the first two violations, kids 15 and younger can make amends in the $10 bicycle traffic school. A parent or grandparent’s attendance is required. (After that, there is a fine or court appearance.) The result is that juvenile bicycle accidents are down.

Ironically, the city’s new bicycle problem isn’t with juveniles. It’s with adults cycling for recreation or to build endurance and speed.

“They’re as bad as the kids. They have radios on their ears, they go into traffic,” Adkins said.

The adults have one tendency even the kids avoid, though: They crash into parked cars.