Tuesday, June 26, 2012

What Constitutes A Good Or Bad Parent On The Road?

Motorized vehicles are the number one killer of young people aged 5-34. And despite the outcry and all the efforts to make vehicles safer, the access to cell phone cameras and video suggest that America's roads are more dangerous than ever for our children. And while many of the poor choices America makes involving children may be extreme (strapping a gas can in a child seat while the actual child sits next to it, not buckeled in, etc.) some other choices that appear to be for the best of the children (moving to the suburbs to put them in better schools, driving them to school instead of making them walk) could end up being just as harmful in the long run.

DC Streetblog asks what makes you a 'good' parent? How many miles you put on your car shuttling the children, the vehicle you drive, or something else? It's an interesting premise, that we can actually keep our kids safer by possibly keeping them out of cars more often.

2 comments:

Charles said...

Seems like a lot of parents drive their kids to school to protect them from being hit by cars, but it is the same cars that are driving kids to school that do the hitting of the kids. So would it be better to let the kids walk to school?

SRTC Staff said...

And would kids be less likely to be obese and suffer from diseases like diabetes if they were getting exercise from walking to school? I feel like it teaches responsibility too that some children might not learn other places.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.