The children in the back

If you drive the six hundred yards to school, the children are in the car, and they're learning something.

Jordan Carlson, James Sallis and colleagues, in 2014, studied nearly three hundred American twelve to fifteen-year-olds who lived within two miles of their school, and looked at what predicted whether they walked or cycled there. Several things did, including how safe the streets felt and how the neighbourhood was laid out. But one of the strongest predictors was whether the parents themselves walked or cycled for transport. Teenagers whose parents did were more than three times as likely to be habitual active travellers to school. It's one American study and it can't prove that the parents caused it. But it's what you'd expect, and it's what the school run teaches either way. A child driven six hundred yards learns that six hundred yards is a car distance. A child walked learns it's a walk.

The school run on foot has other things in it. Ten minutes of conversation each way that doesn't happen in a car with the radio on. A child who arrives at school having moved, which teachers will tell you makes a difference to the first hour. A child who knows the route, and at ten can do it alone, which is a freedom the car never gives them.

If you're thinking that the mornings are too tight, I'd say what chapter 8 said. The queue outside the gate is longer than the walk. Walk them to the gate and back to the car, and you've spent the same ten minutes standing on your feet instead of sitting in a queue, and the child has walked. Twice a week is a start.

There's a partner in some households who'd walk if you did, and doesn't because the keys are always in your hand and the car is always going anyway. Nobody says this. It's just easier to get in. A house where one person starts walking the short trips is a house where the other person often finds they'd rather walk too, and the children follow both of you.

Chapter 15 said that the default in a house is contagious in both directions. This is the direction you'd want.