Oct 01, 2008Freikers—short for "frequent bikers"—may soon be pedaling around your neighborhood. The Freikometer system—which includes RFID labels affixed to bike helmets, readers placed in schoolyards and a kid-friendly Web site—is encouraging children to get fit and save the environment by riding their bikes to school. The Freiker program lets kids track their progress on the Web, and at the end of the school year, every child who's biked at least 10 times qualifies for a prize.
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The program is in eight schools in the western United States, and the nonprofit organization that developed it has plans to install it in as many as 20 this year nationwide, says Rob Nagler, who founded the program. Although the prizes add a hefty dose of incentive—kids earn an iPod if they ride 90 percent of the time during the school year—Nagler says some parents report that their children get more caught up in tracking their trip logs on the Freikometer Web site.