Analysis of Parental Attitudes Towards Safety in Student's School Trips with Emphasis On Walking

In most developed countries, reduction of walking to school among children has become a considerable problem causing traffic congestion, air pollution especially near schools, lack of independent decision making abilities and lack of skills in social networking in children and also it increases rate of obesity. So far, engineering efforts such as development of walking facilities on streets leading to schools has not necessarily led to promoting school children walking. Hence, this paper has focused on parental attitudes towards traffic, safety besides socio-economic factors, in choosing school trip modes. Particular attention is paid to elementary students walking mode in the frame of questionnaire survey with their parents. The research questionnaire was particularly designed for this purpose and distributed among 290 families with students of elementary grades one to three in four elementary schools (including both public and private and both boys and girls schools) in district one of education in May 2013 in Rasht. Based on the data from this field questioning, Multinomial LOGIT Model and MANOVA were used to survey effectiveness and relationships of attitudes components towards traffic safety and socio-economic factors in choosing school trip modes especially walking. Results show that parental believing in safety problems and parental trust towards traffic safety experts, its rules, regulations and priorities besides some socio-economic factors in choosing walking, school service and household vehicle mode are significant. Results also show that children dropped to school by motorized modes have parents believing more towards safety problems and greater confidence towards experts than others who allow their children walk to school. Results indicate a lack of perceived safety of walking mode in school trips and parents trust towards traffic experts claim of lack of walking safety. Also, parents who perceive more traffic safety rules and priorities, use household vehicles for taking children to school less. It seems necessary for authorities to persuade parents into choosing walking for their children using some strategy such as SR2S (Safe Route to School) and gaining the trust of parents to choose walking.