Angelica Palafox has long been aware that heavy traffic is a danger to children walking to her neighborhood's three elementary schools.

In San Diego's Mid-City area, the densely populated, low-income district where she lives, 37 children were injured by cars in the 1998-99 school year-twice the citywide rate. The next year Palafox and other parents on the school site council at Franklin Elementary began contacting city officials and community organizations, looking for ways to protect children from the heavy traffic on busy streets near the school.

The parents wrote letters to city traffic engineers and the police department. They circulated petitions asking the city to make the street next to the school one-way. They persuaded a volunteer patrol of senior citizens to help direct children to safe crosswalks. At first, however, their complaints brought no results.

Strength in numbers

Then the Franklin parents linked up with the Mid-City Safe Routes to School Coalition. Composed of parents, city planners, police, traffic engineers, community organizations, and schools, the coalition is working to make streets safer for kids by

• educating parents, kids, and drivers about traffic issues
  
  
• stepping up enforcement of traffic and pedestrian laws
  
  
• identifying hazards such as intersections without crosswalks
  
  
• advocating for these problems to be fixed.
  
  

There's strength in numbers, says Palafox, whose daughter is a fifth grader at Franklin this year. "As a small group, you're going to waste a lot of time going from place to place. The coalition has funding, resources, council members working with them. It's a totally different situation."

The coalition was spearheaded by Children's Hospital of San Diego, with a $25,000 Safe Routes to School grant from the California Department of Health Services.

Parent advocates

One goal of the program is to help parents become advocates for their children, says Anna Zacher, community health coordinator at the hospital's Center for Healthier Communities. That's especially important for the many immigrant parents in the Mid-City area-many don't speak English or understand how local government works.

"Our project helps bring parents together with other child pedestrian safety stakeholders, like traffic engineers, police and schools, to help come up with solutions that work for everyone," Zacher says.

Since the group formed in October 2000, it has hired a consultant to conduct traffic studies at two of the schools-one of the schools received a grant from Caltrans to install the necessary stop signs, traffic lights, and crosswalks. In October 2001 they organized a Walk to School Day event. They've also sent flyers home to parents, held school assemblies on pedestrian safety, and posted signs alerting drivers that there's a school nearby.

Police have stepped up enforcement as well, giving tickets to people who speed through school zones or don't stop at crosswalks. The police also send letters home to parents of kids who break pedestrian laws.

Walk to School Day

On last October's Walk to School Day, parents and children lined up on street corners in the morning and caught a "walking school bus" for International Walk to School Day, an event in which 42,055 California schoolchildren participated. Like a regular school bus, the walking bus follows a route and picks children up along the way. The group approach provides safety in numbers and allows parents to take turns being chaperone, Zacher says.

On their way to school, parents filled out "walkability checklists," noting broken sidewalks, missing crosswalks, and other hazards. When they reached the school and the children went to class, the adults discussed their pedestrian safety concerns and prepared recommendations they sent to the city council.

"It was a very good event," Palafox says. "Parents are now aware of what's going on in our school. Everyone participated and gave their comments, and we keep reminding them how important it is to obey the rules."

Ongoing safety campaign

Now parents are forming safety committees at each of Mid-City's three elementary schools. Elsewhere in the state, says Zacher, parent groups have started regular "walking school buses" or parent safety patrols. At one elementary school in Salinas, parents painted feet on the sidewalk to guide children to crosswalks for safe crossings.

In addition to the San Diego coalition, the California Department of Health Services Safe Routes to School program has provided seed grantsfor child pedestrian safety programs in Sacramento, Redding, Fairfax, Vista, Santa Barbara, Palo Alto, and Berkeley. 

Children: at risk in traffic

"It might seem that if kids can walk on their own two feet, they can walk to school," says Anna Zacher of Children's Hospital of San Diego. But children younger than 11 should be accompanied by an adult, she says, because they are harder for drivers to see. Children are also more vulnerable as pedestrians because their senses are not as fully developed as adults'. For example

• Children have less peripheral vision than adults, so they don't see cars approaching.
  
  
• Children tend to have less acute hearing, so they are often unable to judge where car horns and ambulance sirens are coming from.
  
  
• Children have trouble perceiving the speed of moving objects. A car that's approaching fast may look like it's standing still to a child.
  
  
• Children are easily distracted. A child may chase a ball out into the street without stopping to consider the traffic.
  
  

Tips for parents: More than "look both ways"

Advise your child to

• Make eye contact with drivers so you know that the driver sees you before stepping out into the street.
  
  
• Walk across the street, don't run, so that drivers have more time to see you and stop.
  
  
• Always walk on the sidewalk. If there is no sidewalk, walk on the side of the street that faces traffic.
  
  
• If a ball rolls into the street, call an adult to fetch it.
  
  

Safe Walk to School resources

• Start a Walking School Bus guidebook available from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 888-232-4674.
  
  
• For help organizing a Walk to School event and information on other Safe Routes to School projects, contact the California Department of Health Services, 888-393-0353 or www.dhs.ca.gov/routes2school.