Kids Don't Walk To School? Blame Parents

Maybe when we were their age, we walked five miles to school, rain or shine. So why don't most children today walk or bike to school?

Surveys: |

It's not necessarily because they're spoiled, lazy or overscheduled. A new study suggests that parents' safety concerns are the main reason that fewer than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or biked to school in 2004, compared to more than 50 percent who did so in 1969.

The physical environment that children navigate between home and school is the biggest safety question.

"The greener the route, the more likely it is that children will walk and bike," said Byoung-Suk Kweon, an environmental and landscape architecture researcher at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Using Geographic Information System data combined with a survey of 186 parents of fifth- through eighth-grade students, Kweon found that parents were most concerned about the speed and volume of traffic students would encounter on the way to and from school, the possibility of crime and the weather.

In her study, Kweon found that children use sidewalks, not bike lanes, when they ride to school.

"Parents may be concerned about the safety of bike lanes, and they may be telling their children to ride on the sidewalk because it's safer," she said. "We may need to rethink how to place bike lanes in school walk zones."

Kweon said it's important for parents that there's a buffer between traffic and the sidewalk.

"They are much more willing to let their children walk when this buffer is at least 8 feet wide and when there are also trees in this area," she said.

Although improving the physical environment reduces parents' concerns for their children's safety, Kweon found that the social environment -- especially the likelihood of crime -- strongly affects parental perceptions of safety as well.

Kweon's study was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation and from the Southwest Region University Transportation Center in College Station, Texas.