Why do parents drive their children to school?

摘要

The main factors which are shown to influence modal choice for the school journey are car ownership, the distance travelled and the existence of a bus route between the school and the pupil's home. Any attempt to encourage a transfer of mode must acknowledge the connection between the school journey and the journey to work. If the number of children driven to school is to be reduced it is necessary to look first at adult travel patterns and persuade parents to travel by public transport instead of car. Under present circumstances the potential for changing the modal split of journeys to and from school is poor. As long as parents believe the roads are too dangerous for their child to go to school unaccompanied there is a likelihood that an increasing number will choose to drive their child to school. Improvements to public transport alone will not be sufficient incentive to encourage such parents to allow their children to go to school unaccompanied. This survey has shown that many parents feel a need to accompany their child to school, for both personal and road safety reasons, and those who can choose to take their child by car, simply because it is the most convenient mode. Parents who feel it necessary to accompany their children to school must be encouraged to use other modes and policies aimed at actively discouraging the amount of car use for school journeys must be adopted if a modal shift is to be achieved. These could include incentives to encourage parents to share lifts between them. Increasingly, it is being recognised that what is needed is a complete change in the way that society views and uses the car. The recent report from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution emphasised the relationship between land-use and transport policies and focused on the need to reduce car use.