When I was a child it was usual for the kids to go to school alone, even my little brother whom my mother enrolled in an educational center quite far from home, moved only from (approximately) 9 or 10 years. Now is when we all think: "already, but today there is more traffic, and other dangers ...".
Did you know that 70 percent of Spanish children aged eight to 12 never go to school alone? It seems a very high number, even considering that the strong urban development and the massive use of private vehicles (also when the journeys can be done on foot), has caused the children to have lost mobility. By the way a mobility that gives them autonomy and enables them to make their own decisions, in other words, that helps them grow older.
I tell you this because I wanted to share a very interesting project that Audi Attitudes has launched coinciding with the beginning of this school year: it is the app Attitudes Safe Route, free download and available for iOS and Android. It is a resource that combines technology and education, and aims to raise awareness among young people about their active role in the mobility of the future, while at the same time giving them a little more freedom than from the age of eight they are demanding.
According to a study by Audi Attitudes called "Children, cities and road safety," the average age at which children begin to go to school alone is at 9.4 years, although as I have said there are many in which it will take a few years to travel alone. For mobility experts, their dependence on parents in these movements hinders the learning of road autonomy and their psychomotor and psychosocial development
It is not the first that we present an application to facilitate that children can travel alone to school, we already did it with Trazeo.
AdvertisingNow let's see a little more detail how this application works: first of all children and parents together they must create a safe route in previous journeys to those that children will do alone. While doing so, the positions are recorded and different reference elements are defined. When the child already has the possibility of going to school alone, his device informs him about conflicting points (I imagine that there is a crossing where you have to pay close attention) or friends (establishments to enter to ask for help).
He built-in geolocation system It allows parents to receive notifications stating that their child left the origin and arrived at the destination, they also know if the child moves away from route and safety distance. The application offers the possibility of creating all the necessary routes to cover usual routes (to family members' house, to the academy of revision, to the park, to the sports center of the neighborhood ...).
To encourage their use by children, the app incorporates three educational games that reinforce their autonomy and that are unlocked depending on the use that the child makes of the application and the number of routes that he has completed
Audi Attitudes works thinking about the autonomy of children in the road environment since 2000. Maybe with this application many parents feel more secure by taking the step of allowing children to go alone on the street, in those ages in which we do not know very well whether or not we want to give them some of that desired freedom.
From my point of view, even the use of Safe Route, must be complemented with daily advice, review of experiences and reminders so that this urban environment that is also (or should be) of them, is a little safer and more affordable. I can't finish without remembering that road safety is also the responsibility of drivers, that in general (and particularly in the vicinity of schools or other places where many children gather) should be handled with great care, respecting rules and people.
