Walking vs driving kids to school

[OpportunityKnocks]

I've seen a few rants about traffic on local Facebook pages.

Every single time there is someone who says 'well, if the parents walked their children the half mile to school then we wouldn't have this problem' with an inference that parents are lazy.

Well, actually, people usually drive because it is quicker, just like they drive to work because it's quicker than walking or public transport.

Parents, like the rest of the population have stuff to do. It wound me up because a lot of comments were targeted at parents that don't work. I'm currently on mat leave and drive DS to/from preschool. I have other reasons why I drive him aside from time, but that's irrelevant. Why is my time any less valuable than someone who has to go to work? That half a mile is a 40 minute round trip walking vs a 20 minute round trip driving.

So AIBU to call these people out on blaming parents for traffic?

Surely a keen walker would be encouraging her children to build walking into day to day life rather than letting the car become the default?

No I would never drive if walking were an option.

I'm still not sure how half a mile is a 40min round trip, OP? Or 20mins in a car?

I didn't have a child in the 50s where my taskings involve keeping my child alive and my house spick and span. We are allowed to leave the house nowadays and do things that enrich our babies lives and have adult contact. These are usually scheduled and whilst not directly after dropping off DC3, there is a number of things that have to happen before I get to that scheduled event

I love that you're trying to convince yourself that going to baby sensory or whatever is just as time sensitive as going to work.

@davegrohlsmuse
1/2 a mile each way. Maybe slightly longer, but not much.
Walking - It's 15min ish one way, 25mins ish the other way with the dithering child. Lots of pedestrian crossings.
Driving - slightly longer route as we can't cut through a residential road, but it has several crossroads with time based lights and it's a main commuter route.

I'm not sure why that's relevant anyway? Apparently IABU regardless

My parents road seems to have competitive parent and childminder playoffs. Most of the offenders live a 20 minute walk away (max) but arrive 45minutes early to wrestle the 'best space' close to school. They then sit with engines idling and linger a good time after to chat at the gates.

Two roads down, 10 second drive is tons of parking and a cut through saving 5 minutes of walking time. They could walk or they could park there and walk 2 roads down and arrive 5 minutes before. I often wonder who has so little to do that they do that every day. Once off sure but every day the same people.

Some of the drivers are picking up other kids too but these repeat early birds are just lazy. And odd.

Other kids from other schools i mean

Personally I think driving a journey less than a mile is fucking lazy unless you’ve got a medical condition or are on the way to work.

There I said it.

Admittedly I was a SAHM so I did have the time but I LOVED the one mile walk with my children, plus it helped keep me fit. The one mile took about 15 - 20 minutes each way so I’m not sure why OPs walk takes so long.... I did use a buggy when DS was under school age and gradually increased how much he walked. Healthier for all of us and a great opportunity to talk, to verbally test spellings and mental maths and learn road sense.

I walk my kids every day - 40 mins round trip:

• exercise
• fresh air
• less pollution
• less traffic
• cheaper
• the best reason is the kids and I chat the whole way there and home and it's quality time spent together

Yanbu. The narrative behind a lot of this is that women and children undertake car journeys for frivolous reasons and should leave the roads free for the big important men to go to their big important jobs. There's an implicit hierarchical value judgement.

I'm fortunate that the school is only a few hundred metres away, so no matter how biblical the weather is, there is zero temptation to get in the car, drive the car around the block and end up 3 car lengths closer to the school than my house is anyway (due to the additional wet weather traffic). Sometimes we get drenched through in vile weather, but we survive. We don't drive within the neighbourhood unless luggage is an issue (usually Brownies gear) or it's part of an onward journey (Cubs via Beavers). Quite honestly, I'm far too lazy to drive the car around and wrestle with tight parking spots when it's far simpler to walk (or park further out and walk).

The DC's school is small with a small catchment area on safe, pleasant roads. Many parents work FT/ PT, plus there are clubs/ booster sessions that spread the school runs out a lot, plus there are two free, community car parks within 100m, yet still space within inches of the school is like gold dust. By 30 mins before finishing time, the road is filling up. No one lives that far away from school that it is not walkable in that time (OK, hidden disabilities is a consideration, but not in that volume)

There is one day of the week when I do something getting back just in time, and if I do cut it fine, it's easier to drive the longer way round home to completely avoid the school traffic, parking and blocked chiccanes, then run from home!

It wasn't always easy walking young DCs, first DS1 who it turns out has SNs that probably explain his pb for 400m in 30 mins in toddlerhood because of the multitude of meltdowns along the way (boy was I glad when my SPD pissed off and I was capable of pushing him in a buggy again instead of being dependant on him walking). Then there was a young DS2 being a PITA when I had to get DS1 to places on time, but our culture of walking has paid off, and they are fit and happy to walk as functional transport. I frequently mind another child who was driven pretty much everywhere in infancy, and in the last 18m, the school run on foot has significantly improved his stamina and speed. (Especially at the pace of my dubious time-keeping )

No one begrudges cars for lengthy or dangerous routes without safe pedestrian access, nor very tight schedules for work, but every school has a sizable cohort of people being lazy about car use that makes life harder for everyone else.

@OldHarrysGameboy certainly not where I live. It's parents not school mums, and it's not about freeing up the road for men in big cars, it's about reducing the number of cars full stop, to reduce air pollution for everyone and make it safer for those walking and cycling to school.

I have to say I’m amazed by how so many parents drive their kids to school. I get why for some of them, but in my experience it is the majority. I walked my kids to school for ages, and we loved furthest away, and the streets were always jammed with cars and outside the school was a nightmare and pretty dangerous tbh.

I just think we’ve lost that cultural mindset.

Oh and I then cycled to work after dropping them off, so I was working! I just pushed my bike as we walked.

Echo other posters in that now my kids are older, these are some of the most special times I had with them. We talk about those walking journeys!

It's about people undertaking what is seen as a typically female activity which is seen as an easy target to question self determination. Why don't these women think of the environment? Why don't they consider everyone else before they just wantonly do what they wish? There is surely pleasure, joy even, to be found in undertaking the same forty minute round walk, twice a day, along concrete neighborhood streets in the suburbs, every day, for eight years. It's like hillwalking. It's enriching. Uplifting. Wordsworth wrote about it. Anyway they don't have anything better to do with their time. And getting children to school is a non essential activity. Unlike travelling to a gasp workplace.

I would have needed to leave work 25 mins earlier if I picked dd up on foot. And in the morning to walk to school, walk home again and then drive to work would mean I got to work 25 mins later too. So 50 mins each day that I wouldn't have been paid for or more than 4 hours over the week. Plus my employer wouldn't have agreed to a later start or an earlier finish time. It was just never an option as I expect is the case for many working mothers.

I think we should normalise kids walking to school without their parents from a younger age as is the case in many other countries. My dd walked by herself from the middle of Y5 but this wasn't the norm.

More could be done to make walking routes safer for children (ours had busy roads without crossings) and to create more walking buses.

@LisaSimpsonsbff is it necessary to belittle my activities? If I'm 20 minutes late, I miss it entirely.

Obviously you don't see the value of these types of activities to child or parent.

Why don't they consider everyone else before they just wantonly do what they wish?

Well, yes, because 'everyone else' here includes the other women who are dodging car-filled roads and exhaust-filled air as we try to walk our own children to school.

But no no, I'm sure it's just because we don't appreciate how much more important the parents making those roads dangerous are. Now that I realise they might be bored if they didn't have the option of driving 300m down a quiet road and parking on the pavement, I will of course tug my forelock to them the next time I'm yanking my toddler out of the way of their wheels.

Any road with a car being driven on it is dangerous. But, well, roads have cars. That's kind of the point of roads.

Old harry - I'm talking about parents driving their kids to school not mums

Ah yes, of course, who am I to judge the supremacy of the almighty car! Who do us measly pedestrians think we are, eh? We should just shut up our whining about 'road deaths' and 'air pollution' and 'not wanting our children to grow up living a wholly sedentary lifestyle' and get in a Range Rover like everyone else.

40 minutes to walk 0.5 miles? Are you walking backwards or something? I walk a couple of my grandchildren to school over double that distance from their home and it doesn't take that long.
I could take them in the car, but I prefer them to walk.
I always walked all mine to school and back. Their school was almost two miles away.
It certainly didn't take us 40 minutes.

I think that there is a growing awareness of air pollution. It will massively change our habits but it will take ten or more years.

Other examples of non essential journeys:

Going to concerts and gigs. Haven't these people heard of spotify?

Going to the seaside for the day. Just look at a fucking picture of the sea already ffs. Or run some water in the sink and look at that. (Recycle it after, obvs)

Going on holiday. Really no need when there's the internet. Again you can look at pictures and for the full on user experience log on to netmums where you won't understand a word anyone is saying and you have the sneaking suspicion that they're all laughing at you.

Visiting your parents. What the fuck for? You've met them already, right? Just fucking Skype already or even better stand in front of a mirror for thirty years until you've morphed into one or other of them.

Most car journeys aren't necessary as such, but the car journeys that some people make have actual campaigns against them. Those are the car journeys that are mostly done by women.