Well that headline sums it up. After 10 years of dealing with it and wondering "how the f did we get to this point", it's satisfying to hear it called what it is.
A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sleep and all the rest.
Pay for the buses! Build the greenways! Normalize walking! And stop worrying about abductions for the love of gawd!
Everyone here should watch the Japanese TV series, Old Enough!. 2-4 year olds are sent out on their own to run errands, etc. Yes, really, 2-4 years old. And they succeed and are fine.
That wouldn't work in US until the whole culture changes. An individual family may do this, and then someone will call child protective services because there is a lost, unaccompanied child.
Happened to my coworker: kids were playing outside and a neighbor called the authorities on them. Not clear if they really thought the kids were in danger, or just did it out of spite, but what ensued was a nightmare of CPS calling the workplace and a few follow-up house visits. The sad part is everyone involved can turn around and claim "we were worried about the children" and use that as a shield for whatever overzealousness or maliciousness may hide underneath.
I really dislike it when Japan is brought up as a comparison with the US, especially when it comes to crime or schooling. The cultures, poverty levels, and crime rates are so vastly different that it's never helpful.
My dad grew up in 1930’s Detroit and would tell us about how when he was five his mother would give him a little money and have him walk a few blocks to the baker to get a loaf of bread.
I grew up in the 70’s where after maybe eight we had pretty much free rein. I rode my bike several blocks away and crossed two busy four lane roads to get candy at 7-11.
The world is no more dangerous now than it was then, and yet here we are, with parents being treated like criminals for letting their kids play in their own front yard.
In grad school, a friend from China explained that he stayed home on his own starting at like age 3. He was going down to the market outside his high rise apartment, buying basic groceries, and entertaining himself all day. It blew my mind, he saw nothing wrong with it.
When they started the pickup lines, I started just parking about half a mile away from the school. He knew exactly where I would be and we completely avoided the traffic and insanity of that nonsense.
We live about a mile from his current school, so he rides his bike whenever the weather permits. He's always in a good mood when he gets home.
I think it's funny that when he gets older, he'll be able to say that it was uphill both ways since we have a sizeable hill between home and school.
My kids having been cycling a mile each way to school since they were 5 years old. It's definitely doable, although we're fortunate enough that we aren't both working long days, and are well off enough that school is that close.
A mile is not close. Disclaimer: I am european. Grew up in ireland. Lots of cars, but unless you're in the countryside or its raining, it's generally walk/cycle to school. In Stockholm now, you are 'shamed' if you drive to school to drop your kids off. "Normal" parents have cargo bikes to bring their small kids to school if it's a long distance (like 500m or more).
And bicycles! A bike path takes half the width of a single car lane, there is absolutely no excuse not to have a network of bike paths almost everywhere there is a road. Literally just throw concrete barriers on one of the outermost lanes and you're most of the way there.
The impact this has on the quality of life of everyone, but particularly those that can't/won't drive, is enormous.
I mean, walkability is a big problem for me. My kid would have to cross multiple busy streets in order to get to school (which is ~3 miles away). We don't have crossing guards either, the only ones we do have are literally at the school property.
His choices were bus or walk (my experiences in the car lines are from days when kids needed to picked up for an occasion) before you jump to too many conclusions.
That kind of upbringing worked out really well for the boomers, we are in this mess because of that.
Kids should have agency and independence, but also a feeling of safety, trust, and security. You cannot force a kid to work against their own safety instinct because of your own selfish comfort.
I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they will just find their parent. That's how my kids school works and there is no traffic jam.
Just letting the kids out en mass is how my son's school worked until Covid. Then they went to the call out the car as it arrives system as you describe, and they never went back. It is so much worse. Thankfully, my son drives himself to school now so I don't have to deal with it any longer.
Yeah, this seems like a pretty surprising omission from the article. In particular, it stuck out to me at this point:
> In fact, in 2022 only about 28% of US students used the school bus to get to school.1 Using the school bus is trending down, as shown in Chart I. In 1969, about 38% of students used the bus, similar to 2009 with 37.5%, and further dropping in 2017 to 36.5%.
In other words, for nearly half a century, the percentage of students taking the bus only fell by 1.5%, and then five years after that, it fell by an additional 8.5%. It _might_ not be covid, but clearly something became a factor between 2017 and 2022 that wasn't at least as far back to 1969, and I feel like it's the obvious hypothesis that would need to be addressed first.
>Just letting the kids out en mass is how my son's school worked until Covid.
My kids school worked like that and it was still a mess, primarily because the parents were too stupid to follow the rules as to how to park their cars. I was set up so that everyone parked in parallel rows ||||| but the ones on the right were closest to the exit, so a bunch of people would pull into those rows to the point that they'd wrap around behind the other rows ___| and prevent people from getting into those rows. It was stupid and the school would send out notices and have employees walk down to the end of the row and tell people to move to the next one but it never stayed fixed.
If kids have to be released to their parents and are no longer turned out en masse like they used to be, that will absolutely cause traffic and could very well be the root cause of traffic that exceeds the designed capacity of the school pickup circles.
When I was growing up kids within a mile of the school would walk themselves to school and back home with very few exceptions, often starting with first graders. But even a half mile is a long enough distance that many busy parents in the suburbs would choose to drive it rather than walk it four times a day.
I’m across the street from a school and there is always one parent that parks in my condo building’s driveway and blocks it. It would be too much for them to be in the line!
Then sometimes, they leave their car and go in the school and we are trying to home or leave and they get angry with us!
But it does cause it because every car needs to get checked off. When I was a kid in the 80s, there were still quite a few kids that got picked up, but no one was picking them up from the door. They'd park somewhere around the school within a block or two.
And the vehicles are limited by the roads that are available to line up on.
And the roads are limited by the school's ability to acquire land.
And no reasonable school is ever going to set aside any more land for a car line than is absolutely necessary that could otherwise be used to provide more school building/field.
Many of them can't walk home from school. As the article says, most students now live too far away from school (greater than three miles), and many rural/suburban areas have underdeveloped sidewalks and traffic systems.
If three miles sounds like not a big deal, it certainly is when you have short legs, a backpack full of books, and uncooperative weather. I was lucky enough to walk to/from school for most of my schooling. It was only around one mile and it still took 30 minutes. As an adult I would probably balk at a 90-minute commute.
The parent has already signed a release form at the beginning of the school year that designated their kiddo as a walker, and did not need the parent present. Just like your DoorDash option to not be needed to be present
Agreed. We don’t have much of a car line since it’s a walk-to-school neighborhood (90% walk). Still, k-2 are dismissed to parents. Once 3rd grade hits it’s open.
Schools (EDIT: feel the) need to dismiss the kid to someone. That could be another parent, in the case of carpooling. It could be a bus driver. The root problem is parents chauffering their kids to and from school.
Certainly, at a certain age they do. I remember picking up very young cousins. But after a certain age, parents should be able to write a permission slip that allows them to walk home. Just because radio communcation is used does not do away with traffic jams. You're still driving, you're still lining up, and there are still a ton of cars which is what the article was talking about.
Yet that are kids that walk at most schools because they live across the street. Or at least there used to be. And how does that work for a high school that has the same ridiculous lines? 15 year olds know which car takes them home, and sometimes they're riding with peers?
Normally I’d ding a comment like this as low-effort, but… I honestly can’t think of any more appropriate reaction.
I know I’m behind the times, but I was surprised recently when, at an elementary school in the US, they showed me painted lines on the floor of the classroom, indicating the zones out of the line of fire for somebody shooting through the small, jail-like window in the door… apparently they train the babies on this.
I wonder what led up to a system like that—overcompensation for a really big mistake in the past? Abstract fears? The genuine wishes of the parents?
(Edit: looks from sibling comments like this [the pickup line technique] might be a hangover from the excesses of the COVID times…)
An odd choice of dates in the charts: 1969, 2009, 2017, 2022. 40 years between the first two and less than ten between the other ones. I would have liked to see more uniform spacing between the first two to understand whether the change across those 40 years was gradual.
Our family suffers this insanity, too. This is one of the few things my spouse absolutely refuses to budge on: she won't let our child walk, bicycle, or even take the school bus to school because of vague "danger" that the news media is pumping into her. School is only 3 miles away and we live in a peaceful rural-to-suburban area. The kid could walk that distance at midnight and not be even remotely at risk. No facts, statistics or reasoning works.
I totally understand the anxiety. If you get "DANGER!" pumped into you constantly, it's going to be hard to rationalize your way out of that.
Have you two ever tried walking along the road at around the same time? A calm walk along the same path your kids would be taking would put me at ease about the situation if I was in the same spot.
It's not always easy to find the data you want. When you're writing a blog post like this, you do research and find the studies that you can, published when they were.
I know those gaps are often due to the data coming from different sources and it's not always possible to normalize it and what not, but I'm always super suspicious when they do that. Also when you see results that are like 1953-1986, like maybe the results from 1952 and 1987 invalidate whatever point they want to make, so they used only the section that helps their case.
My mom walked me to school until I was in 4th grade. She was a single mom and needed to work, so she decided to let me walk to and from school from then on. I made friends on that walk. 30+ years later, I am still friends with many of them even though we live hours away from each other.
I'm not a parent, so I don't know what I don't know; but, I've observed so many kids being shuffled between school, events, "play dates" where it is harder to build deep relationships outside of the parent's sight. Everything is being curated to "ensure" the kids are safe or on the "right" path.
I understand that we live in a different world, but I really do feel that its to the detriment of the kids.
Kidnappings have been dropping steadily for decades, though maybe it's because kids are indoors more often now. Though FWIW, most kidnappings are from an insane relative, not the random guy promising candy in his van.
I was allowed to play outside unsupervised when I was only 9 years old in 1991, though maybe being on the Keflavik, Iceland US Navy base played a role in that.
80% of kids live too far to walk. It's not that their parents are afraid of kidnappers, it's that they literally cannot feasibly walk to and from school every day.
It doesn't, in the early 90s I was even younger in the US and I had to walk to school about a mile along a busy street. There was no other way for me to get there, no bus or anyone around to drive me.
Yea. I get it. Schools are getting farther away. I was lucky to be 2-3 miles away which I think is a reasonable distance. But it really depends on what people are comfortable with which is what this whole article comes down to.
I wonder if this also takes into account families choosing to send their kids to schools farther away. In particular, sending them to private or charter schools that are farther away.
You also can't really choose to opt out without leaving the country because lots of places make it illegal for your under <13 kid to go anywhere on their own.
Counter point: I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived. I can go on and on and on. I had to learn to walk an extra 20-30 minutes to avoid these situations. I will never let my kids walk home in 2025.
Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a drive-through. In most cases, it is a choice. You can opt to park like a normal person and walk up. This article is absurd. Most of these parents are too lazy to walk 5 minutes. I’ve seen parents show up 40 minutes to be first in queue…just so they don’t have to get out of their cars. Makes zero sense.
I'm sorry for your experience, but this is extremely location dependent.
Walking home from school in many areas is perfectly safe. In other areas it's not. Making blanket statements or restrictions without context doesn't make sense.
So you’re conceding this is location dependent. So in effect you’re saying the article is also location dependent? Pick one. If you knew the statistics on kidnapping or missing children in the US, you would not think of this as a “life-style” choice. By the way, 80% of US population live in urban areas so your experience living in 20% is not representative.
When I was young, my family was on food stamps when my parents were laid off.
It took them some time to find work. For some people, they have no choice where they live.
My parents used to live in a city where violence and crime was common, and I received all sorts of lessons from them about how I shouldn’t go outside, don’t talk to strangers, always be guarded, etc. But my family had moved to a quiet, crime-free suburb and everything they told me seemed like the complete opposite of what I was experiencing in reality when growing up.
>I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived.
Where was this? Most places in the US are not this susceptible to random violence. In the suburban city I grew up in, I'd walk home from school and I never saw a firearm in public when I was a kid, aside from those carried by police.
I live ~1 mile from the local school complex (primary, middle, high all share a gigantic piece of land, though are separate full-size schools). You literally don't have to cross a street to get there from my house - it's all neighborhood walking paths and there's a short underpass at the one road. Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. There's a bus, which isn't the end of the world. Except in the time it takes to wait for the bus, you could walk most of the way to school. And 1/4 of the parents drive their kids anyway.
It's completely absurd.
Of course, I walk the ~1 mile to my office in the other direction and most of my coworkers think I'm a loon. So, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Americans are just hard-wired to drive even the shortest distances. We've done such a piss-poor job with urban planning and transit design that 3+ generations of Americans think anything but a car is unthinkable (literally, I don't think it crosses their minds).
Reading these comments reminds me that America is a big place and experiences are very different from one location to the next. My closest school has hundreds of kids walking to and from through all the neighborhoods if you drive by during morning or afternoon hours.
My last in-office job had numerous people with 20-40 minute walks as part of their commute (except in rain/winter). We had people who routinely biked 10+ miles to the office.
It's not "Americans are lazy". It's the people you're around.
According to the school. They don't like releasing kids on their own for some reason. neighbors wanted their son to walk home alone and the school said the kid could either take the bus, or a parent could show up and walk him out. Yes, for the same ~1 mile walk I describe above, that's all paved paths in a very safe neighborhood outside DC (Reston VA). Not all of Reston is like this, but out are is VERY walkable (~1 mile to schools, ~1 mile to shopping, ~1.5-2 miles to the town center and Metro station).
I remember an Irish cousin of my mother’s moving to Reno, NV in the 90s. She used to dry her laundry on a line outdoors, where the 40° heat meant that it would dry in minutes. Well, the neighbours found this bizarre almost to the point of being offensive and she got kind of ostracised for doing it… and then she had to join in with what everyone else did and used the dryer for 2 hours burning electricity to achieve the same result that could have been done in 1/4 of the time for free.
We live across the street from our kids elementary and middle schools. There is a sidewalk and a crosswalk to the school. Parents in our subdivision still choose to drive in because "the crosswalk is too dangerous". Schools can't afford crossing guards, county engineers claim it is an enforcement issue, police can't cover it with their limited staffing, and Republicans are banning school speeding cameras in Georgia.
New York City saw a 55% reduction in fatalities in school zones with cameras, and Oglethorpe County, Georgia reported zero accidents in a high-risk zone for three months after camera installation, compared to 1–2 daily crashes previously.
Using a monthly prevention rate of 0.9–1.4 deaths[0], a ban could result in 10–17 additional fatalities annually per monitored corridor.
So, after how many bonus deaths will Republicans be held liable?
Crossing guards aren't a substitute for good road design. There should probably be a narrower road by schools to slow people down as well as raised crosswalks. Similar to https://maps.app.goo.gl/TpAiphV8iJZ7j6mY9 as an example. This is across from a school in England where a very high percentage walk
> county engineers claim it is an enforcement issue,
They are probably professional engineers who can lose their license if anyone discovered that there have long been known road designs that prevent this. It will take some research, but the law is on your side to have them dismissed for cause if enforcement is all they are relying on.
It would violate professional standards for a traffic engineer to implement a more pedestrian-safety oriented design at an intersection before the requisite number of children have been killed to justify it.
I looked at the author’s Google map view of the 2 miles they couldn’t walk to school, and the enormous grassed area next to the road would have meant I’d be walking that quite happily in the UK.
During nice weather, surely, but it might be very unpleasant when raining.
When I hear these stories about how children in USA go to school, I am always astonished.
In Europe, my parents took me to the school one single time, for the first school day, when I was 6 years old. Everyday after that I have gone there and come back alone, for a walk of about one mile and a half. Several years later, I continued my studies at a more distant school, to which I was going alone using the public transportation of the city, by bus, the same as most of my colleagues.
Even during the 1st grade (i.e. at 6 to 7 years old) any child would have considered very shameful to be brought to the school by their parents, as an indication that they would have been somehow helpless or handicapped.
Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) but that country road with ample green space left and right? It's fine. Would benefit from sidewalks and bike lane of course, but the author makes it sound like there is a steep cliff left and right of the road.
> Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective)
As children in such a situation, we would have a lot of fun as pedestrians to be a nuisance to the cars that drive on the road, too. :-) Having this perspective, I rather think that the reason why sidewalks are built is because of the complaints of car drivers.
See here, and deer were hit regularly on the 4m road I walked... but even as a kid I recognised it was kind of dangerous, and I wouldn't want my own kids to do the same.
You don't need a pickup truck to be on the phone! It's truly shocking to see just how many (usually speeding!) drivers are on their phones on the highway and elsewhere.
Rural property owners in the US are somewhat likely to shoot first and ask questions about trespassers only later. In some parts of the country the Road is the only obviously public land. (Even that can't be taken for granted sometimes, as private streets exist in some areas, too.)
No they are not. That is what happens in the movies, but in reality those people are just like anyone else - mostly nice people. Even stand your ground laws which allow you to shoot without asking questions only apply in specific situations and are unlikely to apply (though without specific details I cannot say for sure)
Readit News
A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sleep and all the rest.
Pay for the buses! Build the greenways! Normalize walking! And stop worrying about abductions for the love of gawd!
https://www.ntv.co.jp/english/pc/2011/02/old-enough.html
Happened to my coworker: kids were playing outside and a neighbor called the authorities on them. Not clear if they really thought the kids were in danger, or just did it out of spite, but what ensued was a nightmare of CPS calling the workplace and a few follow-up house visits. The sad part is everyone involved can turn around and claim "we were worried about the children" and use that as a shield for whatever overzealousness or maliciousness may hide underneath.
I grew up in the 70’s where after maybe eight we had pretty much free rein. I rode my bike several blocks away and crossed two busy four lane roads to get candy at 7-11.
The world is no more dangerous now than it was then, and yet here we are, with parents being treated like criminals for letting their kids play in their own front yard.
Like any reality TV, you're only seeing the story they want you to see.
Nobody should be gauging reality based on what you see on reality TV shows.
1. Neighbors and friends are notified in advance. "If you see my daughter and she looks lost, please help her, she is doing an errand."
2. The destination is usually notified. "My daughter is coming to buy rice, let me know if she isnt there in two hours."
3. This practice is somewhat old-fashioned and rural. Many parents wouldnt consider it today.
Remember, the show was aired to a Japanese audience. If it were universal, it would not be worth televising.
They also literally had a camera and crew on standby while also blocking off streets (off screen).
Dead Comment
We live about a mile from his current school, so he rides his bike whenever the weather permits. He's always in a good mood when he gets home.
I think it's funny that when he gets older, he'll be able to say that it was uphill both ways since we have a sizeable hill between home and school.
The impact this has on the quality of life of everyone, but particularly those that can't/won't drive, is enormous.
While it's a lot of parental idiocy, please do consider that lack of enforcement action around bullying is also part of the answer.
> In fact, in 2022 only about 28% of US students used the school bus to get to school.1 Using the school bus is trending down, as shown in Chart I. In 1969, about 38% of students used the bus, similar to 2009 with 37.5%, and further dropping in 2017 to 36.5%.
In other words, for nearly half a century, the percentage of students taking the bus only fell by 1.5%, and then five years after that, it fell by an additional 8.5%. It _might_ not be covid, but clearly something became a factor between 2017 and 2022 that wasn't at least as far back to 1969, and I feel like it's the obvious hypothesis that would need to be addressed first.
My kids school worked like that and it was still a mess, primarily because the parents were too stupid to follow the rules as to how to park their cars. I was set up so that everyone parked in parallel rows ||||| but the ones on the right were closest to the exit, so a bunch of people would pull into those rows to the point that they'd wrap around behind the other rows ___| and prevent people from getting into those rows. It was stupid and the school would send out notices and have employees walk down to the end of the row and tell people to move to the next one but it never stayed fixed.
The system you describe isn't necessary to cause the traffic. It's not the root cause.
When I was growing up kids within a mile of the school would walk themselves to school and back home with very few exceptions, often starting with first graders. But even a half mile is a long enough distance that many busy parents in the suburbs would choose to drive it rather than walk it four times a day.
Then sometimes, they leave their car and go in the school and we are trying to home or leave and they get angry with us!
And the roads are limited by the school's ability to acquire land.
And no reasonable school is ever going to set aside any more land for a car line than is absolutely necessary that could otherwise be used to provide more school building/field.
If three miles sounds like not a big deal, it certainly is when you have short legs, a backpack full of books, and uncooperative weather. I was lucky enough to walk to/from school for most of my schooling. It was only around one mile and it still took 30 minutes. As an adult I would probably balk at a 90-minute commute.
80% of kids live too far away for walking to be feasible.
Do they? What's the citation for that law? Who are the schools dismissing the kids to when they walk home by themselves?
Seems like a fine balance to me.
Schools (EDIT: feel the) need to dismiss the kid to someone. That could be another parent, in the case of carpooling. It could be a bus driver. The root problem is parents chauffering their kids to and from school.
"Back in my day" the bell went and we walked out the gate and went home.
Do they? What's the citation for that law? Who are the schools dismissing the kids to when they walk home by themselves?
I know I’m behind the times, but I was surprised recently when, at an elementary school in the US, they showed me painted lines on the floor of the classroom, indicating the zones out of the line of fire for somebody shooting through the small, jail-like window in the door… apparently they train the babies on this.
I wonder what led up to a system like that—overcompensation for a really big mistake in the past? Abstract fears? The genuine wishes of the parents?
(Edit: looks from sibling comments like this [the pickup line technique] might be a hangover from the excesses of the COVID times…)
Our family suffers this insanity, too. This is one of the few things my spouse absolutely refuses to budge on: she won't let our child walk, bicycle, or even take the school bus to school because of vague "danger" that the news media is pumping into her. School is only 3 miles away and we live in a peaceful rural-to-suburban area. The kid could walk that distance at midnight and not be even remotely at risk. No facts, statistics or reasoning works.
Have you two ever tried walking along the road at around the same time? A calm walk along the same path your kids would be taking would put me at ease about the situation if I was in the same spot.
Dead Comment
I'm not a parent, so I don't know what I don't know; but, I've observed so many kids being shuffled between school, events, "play dates" where it is harder to build deep relationships outside of the parent's sight. Everything is being curated to "ensure" the kids are safe or on the "right" path.
I understand that we live in a different world, but I really do feel that its to the detriment of the kids.
Do we, though?
Kidnappings have been dropping steadily for decades, though maybe it's because kids are indoors more often now. Though FWIW, most kidnappings are from an insane relative, not the random guy promising candy in his van.
I was allowed to play outside unsupervised when I was only 9 years old in 1991, though maybe being on the Keflavik, Iceland US Navy base played a role in that.
Yes we do, and it's covered in the article.
It's not kidnappers. It's distance to school.
80% of kids live too far to walk. It's not that their parents are afraid of kidnappers, it's that they literally cannot feasibly walk to and from school every day.
In 1969 only about 30% of kids lived too far away from school for walking to be a realistic option.
In 2009 (and today) that numbers is around 80%.
Walking to and from school is great if you can do it.
Most people cannot do it.
I wonder if this also takes into account families choosing to send their kids to schools farther away. In particular, sending them to private or charter schools that are farther away.
This. I would have let my kids walk to school, but one of the intersections would have been totally unsafe.
Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a drive-through. In most cases, it is a choice. You can opt to park like a normal person and walk up. This article is absurd. Most of these parents are too lazy to walk 5 minutes. I’ve seen parents show up 40 minutes to be first in queue…just so they don’t have to get out of their cars. Makes zero sense.
Walking home from school in many areas is perfectly safe. In other areas it's not. Making blanket statements or restrictions without context doesn't make sense.
Where was this? Most places in the US are not this susceptible to random violence. In the suburban city I grew up in, I'd walk home from school and I never saw a firearm in public when I was a kid, aside from those carried by police.
I live ~1 mile from the local school complex (primary, middle, high all share a gigantic piece of land, though are separate full-size schools). You literally don't have to cross a street to get there from my house - it's all neighborhood walking paths and there's a short underpass at the one road. Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. There's a bus, which isn't the end of the world. Except in the time it takes to wait for the bus, you could walk most of the way to school. And 1/4 of the parents drive their kids anyway.
It's completely absurd.
Of course, I walk the ~1 mile to my office in the other direction and most of my coworkers think I'm a loon. So, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Americans are just hard-wired to drive even the shortest distances. We've done such a piss-poor job with urban planning and transit design that 3+ generations of Americans think anything but a car is unthinkable (literally, I don't think it crosses their minds).
According to who?
Reading these comments reminds me that America is a big place and experiences are very different from one location to the next. My closest school has hundreds of kids walking to and from through all the neighborhoods if you drive by during morning or afternoon hours.
My last in-office job had numerous people with 20-40 minute walks as part of their commute (except in rain/winter). We had people who routinely biked 10+ miles to the office.
It's not "Americans are lazy". It's the people you're around.
Using a monthly prevention rate of 0.9–1.4 deaths[0], a ban could result in 10–17 additional fatalities annually per monitored corridor.
So, after how many bonus deaths will Republicans be held liable?
0. https://ssti.us/2024/03/11/speed-cameras-lower-speeds-and-pr...
Parents could get together and volunteer to do crossing duty or hire a private crossing guard, it probably wouldn't even cost very much.
They are probably professional engineers who can lose their license if anyone discovered that there have long been known road designs that prevent this. It will take some research, but the law is on your side to have them dismissed for cause if enforcement is all they are relying on.
When I hear these stories about how children in USA go to school, I am always astonished.
In Europe, my parents took me to the school one single time, for the first school day, when I was 6 years old. Everyday after that I have gone there and come back alone, for a walk of about one mile and a half. Several years later, I continued my studies at a more distant school, to which I was going alone using the public transportation of the city, by bus, the same as most of my colleagues.
Even during the 1st grade (i.e. at 6 to 7 years old) any child would have considered very shameful to be brought to the school by their parents, as an indication that they would have been somehow helpless or handicapped.
As children in such a situation, we would have a lot of fun as pedestrians to be a nuisance to the cars that drive on the road, too. :-) Having this perspective, I rather think that the reason why sidewalks are built is because of the complaints of car drivers.
I used to dream of walking just 4 miles to school.
I had to walk SIXTEEN miles in the wet, cold snow AND pay teacher for permission to come to school!
(edit: It's the Four Yorkshireman sketch. A joke, people...)
Although, that specific picture’s grassy area is sufficiently large that there is room to walk far away from the cars.
Plenty of space to build a separated bike path for minuscule cost, though.