Motorcycle Safety & Driveability: Motorcycles for 5 year olds, riding dirt bikes, valentino rossi

Question
Good evening! My five year old is interested in riding dirt bikes and my ex-husband is giving me a lot of you know what for getting him started on riding motorcycles at a young age.  Do you know of any links I can send him showing kids younger than the age of five, already racing?  I think my kid's going to love riding with me and I'd love some tips from a man on how to ease another man's mind.  Thanks in advance, Stephanie

Answer
Where are you in the world? If you can't answer your own query in Google, I'll see what I can dig up for you.

Valentino Rossi started when he was 3. If your son is motivated and already balances a bicycle well, go for it. Yes, motorcycling is a relatively dangerous sport, but in a proper club, with proper insurance and your lad wearing the right gear, he will learn to have fun in a pretty safe environment. A grounding like that will make him a much safer rider in later life. What would your ex- rather have, a boy trying out bikes illegally as a teen-ager on rough ground with no safety (as we used to). If the boy wants to ride, let him try it. Hopefully, he'll like it for life or he may just get over it like many a set of drums bought at Xmas!

I've ridden for 26 years and 22 years of that was as a police officer. However, despite all the training, it was often the intstinct for machine control and the sense of balance that I picked up early on that saved me from trouble.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Alec
www.alecgore.com
The Thinking Motorcyclist