SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
School run: Cutting car use will take much more than educating children and parents:
As the summer holidays come to an end and children return to school following lockdown, there couldn't be a better time for us to consider the school commute. Nowadays, many children in the UK commute to school by car. But getting more parents to ditch the car for school journeys and switch to more active modes of travel, such as walking or cycling, is of great public health importance.
[...] As cities have expanded under suburban sprawl, commuting distances to school have increased. They are longer now than they have ever been before. This is another reason more children travel to school by car now than they used to. Less than half of all children in England attend their most local school.
An education policy that lets parents choose their child's school compounds the issue of suburban sprawl. Those parents that are able to exercise choice do so, and in some cases travel great distances so that their child attends the best-performing school. Once school choice has been decided, so too has children's mode of travel to school. Longer school commutes equals more car travel.
[...] Tackling the real causes of car dependency on the school commute would benefit children, society and the environment. It would solve several public health challenges.
If all children attended their local school, fewer children would travel by car, and because of this, fewer children would be injured on the roads. There would be less noise pollution and less air pollution, which would reduce children's risk of developing respiratory conditions. We would see more people speaking to each other on our streets because of the increase in footfall, and there would be an improved sense of safety because there would be more "eyes on the street."
Will eliminating school choice for children make them healthier?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday August 27 2020, @08:04PM (8 children)
Why do they have to travel by car? Can't they walk or take their bike? Is the distance between the school and the home that long? For some that are quite far away I'm sure a bus ride might be in order. But for kids in the suburbs? Or is this more about parents being over protective and believing there is a pedo outside every school looking to kidnap their children? If my parents dropped me off at school there was something wrong, or it was the first day of school. After that I rode my bike, it wasn't that far away -- about 1 km or so when I was seven years old and as I got older the new school got somewhat further away so in the end it was about 4 km. Now as I'm old and grumpy my (away-from-home-) office is just 500 m away.
So just how far away from school does these children live that have to get a ride from the parents? From what I can see in the article it hasn't really changed that much or is much further then what I mentioned. Lazy children or overprotective parents?
There is no guarantee of that I think. But it probably wouldn't hurt them either. It would probably also cut down on the stress of parents when they don't have to taxi their own children around all the time.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 27 2020, @08:56PM (3 children)
Over the years I've done a moderate amount of driving at different times of day. I live in somewhat outer suburbs of a fairly major US city. I've noticed a trend. When I was a kid, almost everyone rode the bus.
More and more I've noticed parents in their cars at schools, lined up by the many dozens, backed out onto and blocking streets, waiting for their kids to get out of school.
Then I notice the buses leaving the schools almost empty.
I've assumed it was helicopter parenting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent [wikipedia.org], which may be the general category of the many mentioned specific reasons.
One of which might be school bus bullying.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Thursday August 27 2020, @10:43PM (1 child)
It's obviously not helicopter parenting, or TFA would be about reducing helicopter use, right?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 28 2020, @03:00AM
True, and that would reduce fossil fuel usage and atmospheric carbon, which will save the children. Maybe we better tell them.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:05AM
>Over the years I've done a moderate amount of driving at different times of day. I live in somewhat outer suburbs of a fairly major US city. I've noticed a trend. When I was a kid, almost everyone rode the bus.
>More and more I've noticed parents in their cars at schools, lined up by the many dozens, backed out onto and blocking streets, waiting for their kids to get out of school.
>Then I notice the buses leaving the schools almost empty.
Yep, when I was a kid, most kids rode the bus (except at a private school I went to for a little while; it didn't have buses), unless they lived close enough to walk as I did for most of my K-12 schooling. Now it seems like parents have to be a full-time taxi driver. Yet another reason I would not want to raise a kid in the US: it's just too much work. In better countries, your kids can just walk to school, like I did, and the schools aren't violent hellholes like so many of the ones here are (which causes much of this taxiing around by parents).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:23PM
when your 'local' school still requires crossing one or two main roads, and there are no off-road bike lanes, it is very hard to see children riding to school, and walking on their own is not much better.
there are far more cars on the roads (UK stats hiding in here [independent.co.uk]
while kidnapping and assault on children is more likely to be perpetrated by people known to the child than a stranger, perception of risk, and awareness that it can happen also help convince parents to supervise the commute - and most don't have the time or energy to walk the children to and from school, the car wins..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @12:22AM
My son actually walks to school because we've purposely moved closer to it, but unfortunately 90% of his school mates all live outside the suburb - yea its a dumb system in our state called "selective schools" where you get in by their exam results instead of where they live; and most folks that opt for that don't plan to move like us. So lots of drive by parents - especially now where public transport is highly unsafe.
Our infrastructure & laws is also such that riding on the road with automotive vehicles is highly unsafe. Everyone I know that rides a cycle to work has had accidents from minor to major to near fatal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 28 2020, @03:03PM
> Or is this more about parents being over protective and believing there is a pedo outside every school looking to kidnap their children?
Yes. Helicopter Mommy fears that the streets are swarming, just swarming I tell you, with thieves, rapists, murders, perverts, and mentally unstable and violence prone nut cases. And that crossing the street is just asking to be run over.
While I disagree with the fearmongering about all the criminals lurking, just waiting for an opportunity, I agree that busy streets are a problem. The southern US is the worst for neglecting all other forms of transportation in favor of the private automobile, because the big cities in the south all had a lot of population growth during peak car worship, thanks largely to another invention that took off in the 1950s, the A/C, which made living in the south a lot more comfy.
Lot of people look down on walking as a last resort means of transportation, used regularly only by the desperately poor. But walking for exercise, that's rich. In any case, walking is made a lot more tedious by sprawl and fences. Another thing about the area of the US I'm in is that everyone is mad for fences. Some fences serve no purpose but to make it more difficult to walk places. One of the crazier ones is two apartment complexes, adjacent, no street between them, but separated by a fence. You wouldn't even know that they are two different complexes if not for the fence. However, the fence ends at the creek in the back, and people have worn a path in the grass from going around the end. Lot of strip mall tenants take the attitude that a pedestrian is not a spender. Making it difficult to walk to the mall by fencing off all approaches other than the street entrances, tilts things towards car owners, who are thought to be more desirable customers.
I once proposed changing city ordinances to allow gaps in the fencing, for pedestrians. The gaps would not be required, merely allowed. Just giving strip mall management another option, that's all. One of the mall tenants was listening, and he went nuts, ranting about how making it easier for pedestrians would lead to more vandalism and accidents, and would force rents and insurance rates to go up, etc. I now realize that approach is a hard sell. People hate change, unless the status quo is terrible. Instead of trying to change an existing neighborhood, a new neighborhood has to be built with the changes from the old neighborhood already in place, before the first resident moves in. And even then, the residents may soon roll back the changes, to the extent the design of the neighborhood permits.
The privacy fence that is so loved by home owners serves to give us more freedom to do what we want in our back yards. I once complained to the city that it seems people with fences have more rights than those without. To my dismay, he agreed. The city and the neighbors won't complain about what they can't see. Want to hang up laundry to dry? Mow the yard less often? Start a flower garden with colors that are not approved by the fascist Home Owner's Association? Better put up a fence, if you don't have one already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:02PM
When I was in elementary school, I lived half a mile down the street from the school, and was forbidden from walking because that was too far. The school wanted absolutely 0 chances of liability for some kid getting snatched on their way to school so if you couldn't be seen by school monitors on your whole route, gotta take the bus.