I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
New England: Staying upright on ice.
Is the secret the penguin walk?
From what I can tell, the secret is rubber boots.
Even those won’t help if the ice is slippery enough. I imagine cars would be universally made a certain way if something could help in all scenarios.
Just relaxing and knowing where your center of weight is helps.
(My practice is Moscow in early spring or late autumn days after everything melted and froze again.)