TORONTO — Driving your children to school seems like a normal practice for most parents but a new study suggests dangerous motor vehicle behaviour at drop off areas may put kids at risk for injuries.
A joint study released by York University, The Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto cites dangerous drop-offs on the opposite side of the road, cars stopped blocking traffic and double parking as cause for concern regarding the rise in collisions.
“We observed that in 88 per cent of the schools that we went to look at and with each additional behaviour it put kids at a 45 per cent increased risk of having a pedestrian collision,” said York University Professor Alison Macpherson during an interview on Global’s The Morning Show on Thursday.
The study reviewed police reports over a 12-year period at 118 public elementary schools run by the Toronto District School Board.
The results show 411 children were involved in personal motor vehicle collisions (PMVC) near schools during that time span with 45 occurring during school travel times and 29 children taken to the emergency room.
Macpherson says city and school officials can make the areas around the schools safer by implementing speed reduction measures.
“I think there are elements in the built-in environment that we can definitely improve on,” she said. “Some of our other research has shown that if you put traffic calmings such as speed humps around schools, people slow down.”
An alternative measure suggested would be having your children walk to school if possible.
“If you can, walk your kids to school. Let your kids walk to school. The more kids walk, the fewer cars, the less chance of one of them being hit by those cars,” said Macpherson.
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