How Kids On The Way To School Can Dodge Covid-19

As schools reopen, parents around the world are grappling with how to prevent their kids from contracting the coronavirus.  It’s an urgent issue, as more than a billion children will be returning to school over the next few months. But a new guide and poll highlight how to prevent another risk:  getting infected traveling to and from the classroom.

“Guidance for Safe and Healthy Journeys to School During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond,” published earlier this week by UNICEF and the Child Health Initiative, aims to help manage the risks posed by the coronavirus to keep kids as safe as possible as they head back to  school. 

“Parents are facing difficult choices about how to protect their children from Covid-19 exposure, dangerous roads, and air pollution while still accessing education,” Saul Billingsley, executive director of the FIA Foundation, a nonprofit based in London, said in a statement, noting that risks from road traffic injury, the number one killer of young people aged 5-29 years globally, and air pollution compound the issue.        

The FIA Foundation coordinates the Child Health Initiative, a coalition of road safety, child rights, and urban development organizations.

The guide details ten, simple, low-cost actions created to make streets safer as governments seek ways to balance health risks with the need for education during the pandemic and in the long-term, for children and the general public. 

These include: 

• ensure physical distancing during school drop-off and pick-up; 
• prioritize active transport to support physical distancing; 
• make it safe to walk, cycle, scoot and ride a wheelchair;
• help students who cycle and scoot to follow protocols; 
• reduce private vehicle use;
• treat school buses as extensions of the classroom; and 
• promote safety and hygiene on public and shared transport

The guide also provides a series of checklists for policy makers, administrators, community members, teachers, parents, and students. 

In conjunction with the guide, a new global poll was released on the perceptions of the journey to school, support for vehicle restrictions to make those journeys, air quality and the willingness of parents to switch modes to support social distancing. Responses indicated strong public support for initiatives like street closures and investment in safe walking and cycling to protect kids on their way to school from both Covid-19 and road danger. 

The poll was conducted by YouGov for the Child Health Initiative between August 7 and September 2 2020. More than 13,000 people in Argentina, India, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States — were surveyed. The responses of both the general population and parents were included in the results. 

In the United States:

•  33% of parents said they thought the roads are not safe enough for their child to walk or cycle to school
• 50% of adults said they were concerned about air quality in their local area
• 55% of adults said they supported road closures, speed reduction, and restrictions on cars near schools
• 47% of parents said they would change children’s school journeys to walking and cycling as part of Covid-19 social distancing measures, but only if streets are safe

Other highlights representing responses from all 11 countries:

• Almost three-quarters of respondents supported physical changes, like road closures, limiting traffic and reducing speeds to protect children worldwide
• More than half of journeys to school are not safe, parents said
• More than two-thirds of parents said they would change the journey to school for their child to walking and cycling as part of Covid-19 social distancing measures, but only if streets were safe.
• Vehicle restrictions to protect young people from road traffic injury and the wider community from Covid-19 exposure and air pollution were emphatically supported by the public.

The poll showed strong support for the importance and need of safe and healthy streets, which during the pandemic have garnered attention; many cities around the world have introduced new or temporary cycle lanes and widened footpaths, reduced vehicle speed limits, and other measures. 

• Worldwide, more than half of all parents with children aged five to 18 (53%) said they felt streets were not safe enough on the journey to school. 
• Latin American respondents reported the highest concerns about both air quality and the journey to school.
• There was overwhelming global public support for road safety measures around schools, which would slow, limit, and even ban vehicles around schools, from 74% of the respondents representing both parents and the wider population.
• In five countries (Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, India, and Kenya) support rose to more than four out of five members of the general public.
• Overall, more than two thirds (69%) of parents said they would commit to shift modes (i.e. their children do not already walk or cycle) to walking and cycling on the journey to school to support Covid-19 distancing measures to reduce the risk transmission if the streets were safe, which would also reduce pollution and congestion, and encourage physical activity.

“The pandemic has highlighted the vital role of pedestrian and cycling provision in enabling safe social distancing,” Billingsley said, and the poll indicated wide community support for interventions like investing in walking and cycling, street closures, and reducing vehicle access and speed around school streets. “Local authorities have the public backing to make these changes to streets now, in response both to Covid-19 and the wider challenges of road traffic injury” and air pollution” he added.

(Measures to make travel safe for school children during the pandemic could improve conditions generally, the Child Health Initiative said. For example, large scale adoption now could help reduce road deaths and improve air quality going forward.) 

Billingsley stressed the importance of focusing on speed reduction while waiting for a Covid-19 vaccine, which would include initiatives like safe footpaths and crossings, cycle lanes and vehicle speed reductions — proven to reduce serious road injury and deaths — to be widely adopted wherever traffic and children mix.

“US roads are less safe than other developed countries, and our young people are bearing the burden,” Natalie Draisin, the North America director of the FIA Foundation, said in a statement.

“Yet these polls reflect a surprising lack of awareness about how poorly protected our kids are on streets. Nonetheless, they show a promising desire for safer, cleaner school streets with fewer vehicles.”.

“We must seize this moment to provide our children with the safe journeys to school they deserve,” Draisin added.

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