A common question when considering Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs and events is whether walking and bicycling to school may increase a school’s liability exposure. According to information from the National Center for Safe Routes to School, SRTS programs should not expose schools to any greater liability. In fact, SRTS programs have the potential to redistribute and even reduce liability.

 

Liability is a legal obligation, or responsibility, that one party (e.g., a defendant) owes to another party (e.g., a plaintiff.) Liability exists for schools with virtually all student activities and modes of transport. A SRTS program can help address liability by incorporating the guiding principles behind SRTS into the school’s risk management process. The “5 E’s” of SRTS – education, encouragement, enforcement, engineering, and evaluation – should be used to assess all modes of travel.

 

Developing a school travel plan that addresses the 5E’s is one way to help identify problem areas and propose remedies to make school travel safer. Once problems have been identified, the school travel plan should detail solutions and create a plan of action with realistic goals and an implementation timeline to sort out short- and long-term projects.

 

Using SRTS principles to assess travel modes can also help to redistribute

liability between modes. This was the case at Wauconda Elementary School outside Chicago. The district school superintendent banned biking to school after a boy who had been walking his bike near the school grounds was hit, but not seriously injured, by a car driven by a teacher. Community members along with the Chicagoland Bike Federation (now the Active Transportation Alliance) evaluated school transportation using the 5E’s and found that the greater risk to students was caused by drivers during drop-off and pick-up times. Based on these observations, they were able to persuade the school to address drop-off and pick-up procedures, effectively shifting the liability focus from bikes to cars.

 

Liability must be regularly addressed by schools for a variety of programs and school-sponsored activities. A school's responsibility for safety and the extent to which a school can be held legally responsible for its actions varies according to the local legal context, the school’s policies and the individual elements of the SRTS program. Organized events tend to entail a higher degree of liability than informal activities. If walking school buses are formally organized, the school may want to take precautions, such as conducting background checks of participating adults, and training staff and volunteers - just as they would for other school-sponsored programs.