Changing people’s minds is never easy. Whether they are simply uninformed or completely misinformed, once convinced that it is impossible for their children to walk to school, it’s a challenge to get people to accept an alternate point of view.  One of the biggest challenges to changing the minds of Safe Routes to School opponents is the fact that the side saying “if children walk to school something bad will happen” has such a strong voice. It’s the newspaper article that reports our neighborhood streets are scary places; the television newscaster announcing, “Are your children safe? Stay tuned!”

 

While liability and “stranger danger,” are real issues, we cannot let these concerns deter us from doing what we know to be good and healthy.  Promoting Safe Routes to School can be difficult, but with all the benefits of walking and biking to school - such as encouraging physical fitness, raising awareness of traffic and pedestrian safety, and improving air quality around schools – it's definitely worth the effort.

 

In this issue of Safe Routes to School, we explore how to deal with concerns such as liability, “stranger danger” and local resistance. In “Concerned with Liability? SRTS Can Help,” we discuss how SRTS programs can redistribute and even reduce exposure to liability.  “Teaching Children Personal Safety:

Tips and Strategies” focuses on teaching children about safety in ways that are informative rather than scary. In “Overcoming Local Resistance in Brick,” we focus on how one community’s efforts to build a strong partnership and allow support to grow naturally through school and public events helped to overcome local resistance to sidewalks. “Bringing Friends Together With Bikes” details how one mother’s decision to bike her daughter to school transformed a lonely neighborhood into a community filled with friends.

 

Overcoming obstacles to positively affect change can seem a burdensome task to undertake. However, everything in life worth doing takes time and hard work. As Safe Routes to School proponents, the best thing we can do is confront obstacles head on and work with parents, teachers, friends and neighbors to find the answers we need. I hope that these stories will inspire you and show you that no matter who we are or where we live, we all face similar obstacles. Working together, I am confident we can work through the obstacles and make walking and bicycling to school safe and convenient for everyone.

 

 

—Elise Bremer-Nei,
NJDOT Safe Routes to School Coordinator