School Gossip: Mom's Ride to School Outlawed in the UK?

walking%20to%20school.jpg That seems to be the case as there’s word out of Europe that the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) in the UK is looking into banning cars from school zones, not to protect students from being hit by a car, but instead to get kids to walk more. And to be honest, the biggest reason they’re looking into it is to reduce the waistlines of kids in the UK, who are rapidly catching up to their counterparts in the U.S. by packing on the pounds due, in part, to a sedentary lifestyle facilitated by the good old-fashioned automobile. In fact, it seems parents in the UK are averaging 27 miles more per year carting their kids to school than they did back in 1982, with Brits of all ages average 20 miles less per year walking than in the 70s. And researchers at the IEEP say that walking an extra hour per week will save 28lbs of fat over the course of a decade. Of course, losing all that weight will be terrific for the health and well being of the UK population, but I’m looking at all that reduced driving and thinking of the reductions in CO2 emissions it will bring… Of course, they’ve already been having some great events inside the UK to encourage kids to walk to school, as they even carpeted a whole street with grass and plants for a day just to make it a bit more entertaining. And just think, if there are no exceptions to this “no car” rule, even for really severe weather, then this generation of students will be able to one day tell their kids how they “walked 5 miles up hill to school, both ways, in the snow and in the ice,” just like my dad did…