The proportion of kids who walk to school is not linked to the number of crashes in a neighbourhood. Instead the “built environment” is responsible, a new study shows.

It’s among parents’ worst fears: their child getting hit by a car while walking to school.

But a new study shows that the rate of child pedestrian crashes does not increase in neighbourhoods where there are more children walking to school. In fact, areas that have denser populations are less likely to have such collisions.

“Promoting walking is a good idea for all kinds of reasons,” said Andrew Howard, a child health epidemiologist at Sick Kids Hospital and the senior author of the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

“The good news is it doesn’t necessarily have to increase the number of child pedestrian injuries as long as we focus on the safety of the built environment,” he said.

Howard and his team looked at pedestrian collisions for children from the ages of 4 to 12 between the years 2002 to 2011 for all school boundaries in the City of Toronto. They also looked at the proportion of kids walking to school and “built environment” features like traffic lights, one-way streets and crossing guards.

There were 481 collisions during that period involving children. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of child deaths in most developed countries, according to the study.

Violet Liang, 14, was killed when she was struck by a truck on the first day of school near Finch Ave. W. and Keele St. last September. Kayleigh Callaghan-Belanger, 5, was hit by a garbage truck while walking home from her Scarborough school in March 2013.

“There is such a thing as a safer or more walkable neighbourhood, and such a thing does exist in Toronto. But there’s a lot of variability across Toronto,” said Howard.

The safer neighbourhoods tend to be ones where population density was higher and, surprisingly, where there were fewer road crossing features such as crossing guards and traffic lights.

“It makes it look as if some of our safety features might be dangers, but I think that’s misinterpreting what the study says,” said Howard.

“I think that these sorts of features are present in larger numbers where there are greater numbers of road crossings and where those road crossings are on higher-speed or higher-volume roads.”

While more population-dense areas are less likely to see crashes, that doesn’t necessarily mean downtown is safer than the suburbs. Safe neighbourhoods are scattered all over the city, Howard said.

For example, Thorncliffe Park Public School in East York is one of the safest areas. It has large buildings filled with children who live close to school and a limited number of road crossings and traffic, he said.

Toronto’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, likened it to a “chicken and egg” situation: the more kids walking to school, the safer it becomes.

“When you have a gaggle of children walking along the side of the street, everyone slows down. Everyone is aware there are children in the neighbourhood and I can’t be zooming around,” she said.

But she said the catch-22 is that parents are both “the solution and the problem.”

“The concern is that children will, in fact, get hit by a car and it’s the parents driving their children to school that are, in fact, increasing the traffic volume.

“Saying that, I don’t want to imply it’s a very easy thing to fix, because we don’t live in the 1950s when mom was home baking muffins all day and she could leisurely walk the kids to school and walk home again.”

Keesmaat noted the “logistical constraints” preventing many parents from walking their kids to school. But she said that she has been working with the Toronto District School Board to develop an active transportation charter.

“They’ve been able to make the connection between academic performance and children walking to school, having that time in the morning outside, fresh air, their brain being stimulated having that activity,” she said.

“It’s really important in building childhood autonomy as well.”

Councillor Gary Crawford, who represents the ward where Kayleigh Callaghan-Belanger was killed, said there were no sidewalks on the street where she died. The city is working with the school board to see how to improve the built environment around schools, he said.

He also said that parents need to obey the rules around school drop-off zones, which can become a dangerous and chaotic area.

“It used to be that 40 years ago, most kids walked to school and there were no cars. Today, you’re finding more and more parents, leading more hectic lives, they end up dropping the kids off.

“The city has a responsibility, the school board has a responsibility and the parents have a responsibility to ensure they’re part of that solution.”

Source: Toronto Star
April 07, 2014
By Laura Kane, photo of Jennifer Keesmaat by Keith Beaty
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/04/07/kids_rates_of_walking_to_school_not_linked_to_crashes_study.html