Improving Safety for Walkers and Rollers

• Walk 'n Roll to School Day events are great ways to promote a broader message of safety and support for safe, active travel for pedestrians and bicyclists.
• By starting with children and the trip to school, communities become safer places for everyone to walk and bike.
• Walking and biking to school provides children practical experience with respect to road safety.
• Communities rally around making safety improvements that benefit children.
• Safety measures aimed at protecting youth - such as controlling speed, having ample crosswalks, and improving walking and biking facilities on school routes - have broader effects that benefit the entire community.
• Experiencing these safety improvements around schools helps build public support for their use in other areas of the community.

Strategies for youth - such as Walk to School Day and Bike to School D a y - create opportunities to encourage behaviors and change mindsets that inspire long-lasting, community-wide change. Around the world, communities are committing to eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries. Vision Zero for Youth is focused on improving safety in school zones and other places where children and youth walk and bicycle.

Environmental Benefits of Walking and Rolling to School

• Walking and biking to school encourages a healthy lifestyle, and it is environmentally friendly.
• Active travel modes, such as walking and biking, can replace many of the short car trips we make throughout the d a y - including those to school, plus it reduces traffic congestion near schools.
• Adopting modes of active travel can simultaneously improve or maintain healthy weights while reducing oil consumption and carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to pollution.
• Even when considering rapid population growth in most American cities, bicycling has the potential to reduce carbon emissions more than any other alternate mode of travel.