wrote:

Kevin Karplus wrote:
On 2005-09-17, Sushi Fish wrote:
to be safe, you want to drive her to school. cars are not the only
threat. your child is still at elementary, too little to walk by
herself, shortcut tends to be in obscure area.

Wrong---the health hazard of being in a car far exceeds the risks of
being a pedestrian, except in the very worst neighborhoods.

For pedestrians and bicyclists, cars are not the *only* threat, but
they are the biggest threat to kids of death or serious injury by
orders of magnitude.

The attitude that everyone *ought to* drive their kids everywhere is
probably one of the largest contributors to the obesity epidemic in
the US.

When mine were little, I wouldn't have allowed them to walk. There were
no sidewalks in some areas. There were roads to cross. Most kids in the
area did not walk. I didn't like the idea of the children walking
alone. I would have no way of knowing they had reached school.

By the time my kids were old enough that I would have considered
letting them walk (about 10-11) we were no longer living close enough
to school for it to be feasible.

The schools did not provide buses except for children being bused in
from other neighborhoods as an affirmative action measure. It was
easier for me to drop them in their schools and then go to work,
knowing they were safe.

I've been thinking about this a bit.

I always walked to my school which was about 1/2 mile or less. Both
my parents worked but they had only one car. Taking me to school was
not an option.

I do not remember having any buses at our elementary school. All the
neighborhoods had sidewalks, and if it was too far to walk, kids took
the public trolley which ran down the main street in front of the
school. I don't know how the kids on the other side of the street got
across though - maybe there was a crossing guard or something. I
lived on the same side as the main street as the school.

My route to walk was to go down my street 3 houses to the alley, walk
through the alley to the street behind ours, walk up that street
another 3 or 4 houses. Go across a block of storefront stores (A&P
and a drugstore were two of them and I would sometimes stop on the way
home to buy a Turkish taffy), and then walk in front of a couple more
houses, go down the LONG (in my memory) driveway alongside of the
school to the back of the school where there was a playground. When
the bell rang, we lined up by class, and were marched in by the
teachers. I don't remember what we did in inclement weather. This
school had grades K-8.

When I was in 8th grade we moved and were less than a block from the
hs that I went to (which I just attended the 50th reunion for our
graduating class). The HS did have buses for outlying areas, but I
always walked (or ran if I was late). This was the first time I had
been at a school with buses. One of my classmates remembers refusing
to stay for after school detention because there would have been no
transportation and he would have had to walk 8 miles home.

When dd#1 was in kindergarten in California, she walked up to the top
of the hill (2 houses distance) and then had to cross a busy main
street without a crossing guard. After the first couple of days, I
let her do this by herself. But California DOES have a yield to
pedestrian law and they enforce it pretty strictly, or did in those
days anyhow. From there she had about a half mile walk through the
suburbs to school where there was one crossing guard.

We moved in the middle of her kindergarten, and she, and then later
dd#2 walked to a parochial school - two blocks down to the dead end
of the street and then two blocks over to the school. No major
streets to cross and a crossing guard at the school.

Then we moved to Philadelphia and they had a similar walk on streets
with sidewalks and no major streets to cross so they walked to school.

We were in Maryland next, and the school was both too far away to walk
to and would require crossing several very busy streets, so they rode
the bus. I don't remember driving them to school although sometimes I
picked them up to go to music lessons or something.

After that we lived in a very rural part of Rhode Island right on a
state highway which had no shoulders or sidewalks but did have a
traffic roundabout between them and the school where two state
highways crossed, so they rode the bus. I did sometimes pick them up
from school if they were in an after school activity either in school
or elsewhere.

From there we moved to where we are now in Maryland - by this time
dd#1 was in 7th grade, dd#2 was in 5th grade and dd#3 was in kinder.
We lived about a mile from the school, but again they would have had
to walk on the shoulder of a major state highway for most of that
distance. So they rode the bus.

DD#1's older children initially walked to school until the oldest got
to middle school at which point she switched them to a Catholic school
and had to drive and pick them up. She carpooled with other parents.

When she was in England it was the same - parents provided the
transportation to the Catholic school - I don't know the specifics,
but there were rules about how it was done. Now their youngest is
still in elementary school I think and they are in a suburb with
absolutely no sidewalks, so I think he rides the bus although the
school is not very far. (USA type Public school)

DD#2's children are in private school as I've said where the parents
must provide transportation. The route to drive to the school takes
them through several other school zones.

DD#3's children are in a suburb (bedroom community) of Dallas, and
they live about a half mile from the school. DD#3 walks her child to
school every day and walks to the school to pick him up. This aids in
her fitness, and also the fitness of her younger child and provides a
way to exercise the dog (a boxer).

DS's oldest child was being bullied on the bus so his parents mostly
drove him to school. Right now he is in a middle school with a magnet
music program and has three changes of bus to get there, plus there
are no lockers at the school and he has two musical instruments
(violin and trumpet) and all his books to carry, so his parents
sometimes pick him up. I've never heard that they did that for his
younger sister though - she seems to ride the bus without problems.


grandma Rosalie