The signs say “School Is Open,
Drive Safely.” Of course, one should always drive safely, school or no
school, and not only “when children are present,” as speed limit signs
near schools often state. If only these signs reflected what health and
safety experts hope will become a major change in how children get to
and from school and after-school activities.
Forty years ago, half of all students walked or bicycled to school.
Today, fewer than 15 percent travel on their own steam. One-quarter
take buses, and about 60 percent are transported in private
automobiles, usually driven by a parent or, sometimes, a teenager.
The change was primarily motivated by parents’ safety concerns — a
desire to protect their children from traffic hazards and predators.
But it has had several unfortunate consequences. Children’s lives have
become far more sedentary. They are fatter than ever and at greater
risk of developing hypertension, diabetes and heart disease at young ages.
The sedentary life also affects their behavior and the ability to
learn. Studies have shown that children who engage in moderate to
vigorous physical activity show improvement in concentration, memory,
learning, creativity and problem solving, as well as mood, for up to
two hours after exercise.
With more children being driven to school, traffic congestion has
mushroomed. That has increased stress to drivers and risks to
pedestrians and cyclists, as well as air pollution, especially in and
around schools. Parents who drive their children to school make up
about a quarter of morning commuters. More traffic also means more
vehicular accidents, endangering the lives of children and the adults
who drive them. It has become a vicious cycle that must be broken, and
soon.
Safely moving children to and from school and after-school
activities is a matter of great concern, not only to parents, but also
to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which in July issued a policy statement on school transportation safety.
School Buses Versus Cars
The academy’s statistics on injuries and fatalities suggest that
being driven to school in a passenger vehicle is by far the most
dangerous way to get there, and riding in a school bus is the safest.
Seventy-five percent of the fatalities and 84 percent of the injuries
occur in passenger vehicles, but just 2 percent of student deaths and 4
percent of injuries result from travel by school bus.
The numbers might not tell a complete story. The academy’s Committee
on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention and the Council on School
Health pointed out that “school bus crash data are incomplete, and that
injuries cannot be reliably estimated.
“The first emergency-department-based study of nonfatal
school-bus-related injuries found that the number of injuries, 17,000
annually to children 0 to 19 years of age, greatly exceeded previously
published estimates.”
When the Minneapolis highway bridge collapsed this summer and a
school bus filled with children plunged toward the Mississippi River,
witnesses described children “flying” around in the bus. There are just
two ways that could have occurred. Either the bus was not equipped with
safety restraints or the children, all of whom escaped safely, were not
buckled in.
Before child-restraint systems and safety belts came along, large
school buses relied on “compartmentalization” to protect their
occupants. This meant closely spaced seats with high energy-absorbing
backs, which we now know to be inadequate, especially in rollovers and
side impacts with other large vehicles. As of this summer, Florida,
Louisiana, New Jersey and New York, as well as many local school
districts, had passed laws requiring seat belts in school buses.
California requires them in newly made buses.
Children should be secured in age-appropriate restraints in all
motor vehicles. On a school bus, someone other than the driver should
be responsible for assuring this.
There are potential side benefits, too: better student behavior, a
more consistent seat belt habit among children and fewer distractions
for the driver.
The academy urged that all school buses built before 1977 be retired
from use “because they are deficient in several significant safety
standards.” Old buses also spew undue emissions of pollution that
children inhale, increasing respiratory symptoms and hospitalization
for asthma.
Safer Routes
Cities and communities throughout the country are trying to
encourage more children to walk or bike to school. The only way this
can occur is if children can travel there safely. That means more
sidewalks and clearly marked bike lanes or paths separated from
roadways, lower traffic speed on school routes, safer crosswalks,
well-trained crossing guards at all corners near schools and adult
supervision.
Also helpful are traffic-calming measures — changes in the design of
streets and intersections to slow traffic automatically to acceptable
speeds. In 2005, Congress allocated $612 million over five years to
help communities create such safer routes to school.
Seattle has reported a 77 percent to 91 percent reduction in traffic
accidents after installing a citywide traffic-calming program that
included 700 new residential traffic circles. Just last week, Gov. Eliot Spitzer
announced that New York would spend $32 million in federal money on a
Safe Routes to School initiative that includes transportation and
public education projects across the state. More information on traffic
calming is available from the Local Government Commission at www.lgc.org or by calling (800) 290-8202.
Oct. 3 is the date of national Walk to School Day this year, promoted by the Partnership for a Walkable America (www.walktoschool-usa.org).
Children who fail to learn how to walk safely face greater risks
whenever they are pedestrians. They have to learn when it is safe to
cross and how to judge the speed of oncoming traffic. They must be
taught to look both ways for traffic, even on one-way streets. Vehicles
do sometimes make mistakes, and bikes can come from any direction.
Parents, who are notoriously pressed for time to exercise, can
benefit, too, if they walk or bike with their children to school. Just
as parents have managed to organize car pools and play groups, they can
organize groups of children who walk or cycle to school accompanied by
a different adult each day or week. A walking version of the car pool,
the Walking School Bus, has been successful in Canada and England.
Parents share the responsibility of escorting children to and from
school on foot or bike.
For guidance on setting up a Walking School Bus, a guidebook is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Check the Web site, www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/kidswalk/, or call toll-free, (888) 232-4674.
No need to wait for Walk to School Day. Start today to promote better health and safety for all schoolchildren.
For a look at last year's Walk to School Day in Delaware, see my tv series this week. Here's the info:
Tuesday, September 25, The Universityhouse Channel will show Episode 128 of "Perils For Pedestrians".
Contents of Episode 128 (2007):
--We attend Walk to School Day in Delaware.
--We learn about Starkville in Motion in Starkville, Mississippi.
--We look at pedestrian safety at a highway interchange in Raleigh, North Carolina.
--We visit Broadway in Saratoga Springs, New York.
DISH Network Channel 9411 -- The Universityhouse Channel
Tuesday -- 9:30 PM Eastern, 6:30 Pacific
Episode 128 is also available on Google Video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8783602280932460408
Note: Public access cable channels are showing different episodes than DISH Network.
Thank you.