Introduction

Many, if not all, schools experience chaos at the school gates as parents deliver or collect their children from school by car. Shortage of parking spaces leads to inconsiderate parking, increasing the danger to children. For a variety of reasons, including traffic danger, far fewer children now walk to school compared with previous generations.

While many parents feel it is safer to drive their children to school, the level of traffic this generates creates considerable danger for children without access to cars and makes alternative forms of transport, such as walking or cycling, more hazardous. As a result, children have lower levels of fitness and are unable to develop road crossing skills.

What are the Advantages?

Since 1971, the proportion of 7 and 8 year olds walking to school unaccompanied has fallen from 80% to 9%. Apart from increasing traffic congestion and school parking problems, the situation has many other implications:

• Parents spending large amounts of time on "escort duty"
• Low levels of fitness among children, leading to potential health problems in later life
• Children have less opportunity for spontaneous and unstructured play, as parents are reluctant to grant them the necessary independence
• Increasing road danger for those children who walk and cycle to school
• The health and environmental impact of air pollution due to the increasing number of car journeys
• A lack of driver awareness of the needs of child pedestrians and cyclists as they rarely encounter them
• A lack of road safety skills among children, who have little direct experience of traffic and how to cope with it

The UK has higher child pedestrian casualties than most other European countries. When children travel independently to secondary school, they are often unable to cope with the dangers they face.