Farm Safety Brings Reflective Vests and Scooter Safety Education to Our Amish Friends

A couple of years ago we were visiting our friends the Stoltzfuses, an Amish family living in Lancaster County, and I was delighted to see that the kids were starting to wear high visibility reflective vests when riding their scooters to school and around town.

(In their particular Old Order Amish church district they’re not permitted to ride pedal bikes, so they ride fairly big, efficient push scooters instead. Local Old Order Mennonites can ride bikes.)

It turns out Kay Moyer – a local “English” woman who works for the Pennsylvania State Extension (similar to Maine’s Cooperative Extension program) as a farm safety educator – is especially concerned with getting vests on every Old Order Amish and Mennonite student in the area.  (It’s particularly important for the Amish because of the dark clothes they generally wear.)

Initially she helped local Amish and Mennonite families get the materials to make the vests – and now the program is also distributing ready-made versions.  Through her puppet and toy presentations, she also ensures that students learn proper road traffic safety skills – in addition to farm equipment safety.

We just made our annual visit a couple weeks ago and I got permission to photograph a few of our Stoltzfus friends riding to school with their vests (first photo above).  I was encouraged to see more adults wearing vests on scooters and bikes as well.

And there’s a photo of our daughter Cedar (sans vest because of her bright pink coat) riding off to school with her friend Kathleen on a different morning, too.

You can see that a lot of uphill scootering involves walking (slower than biking but good exercise!)