Children's independence outside the home has dramatically dropped over the last 40 years, report shows

What a horrible picture. Testament to the denormalisation of cycling.

(in reply to Ghedebrav) Which leads to the an interesting question: Are the population living in fear because they're told to be, or because they want to be? In exactly whose interest is a fearful population?

Statistically the 1970s were a very bad time for children indeed as the revelations about Jimmy Saville and his horrible crimes, plus those of his associates and others like him, are beginning to reveal. The crimes went on behind closed doors and were very rarely reported on, unlike now. There may have been a lot fewer cars on the road in the UK, but accident levels were much higher due to regular drink driving and speeding and the annual fatality rate was also far higher than it is now.

The perception of danger compared with actual risk has changed significantly. As a parent myself I try to allow my kids freedom, but know they can't have the freedoms I had. It's as much down to peer group pressure amongst parents as anything else. My kids are not ferried to and from school by car - one walks and the other takes the bus (it's too far to walk). But I know a lot of parents who still insist on driving short distances to and from school.

I see also the terrible congestion outside schools when I make my commute and how this blocks other traffic, and I do wonder how many of those kids live less than 2km from their school and could easily walk. And because they are so protected at a young age, when they become teenagers and do go out on their own they'll have so much less experience of crossing roads or of independence in general they'll be at even greater risk.

I do look at my nephews growing up in Germany and see they still have much greater freedom than my kids here in the UK, and my kids certainly enjoy that when they're with their cousins there on holiday. But there are hidden dangers in Germany also, where let's face it the annual fatality rate is proportionially higher on the roads than in the UK. And there are also crimes of abuse against children that are perhaps not as widely reported in the UK, leading to a false perception of safety (as was the case in the UK in the 1970s).

It isn't just about cycling. But encouraging parents to teach their kids to ride bikes would help. A lot of parents are too lazy, while others are too scared of perceived risk, to think of cycling. We are facing an obesity crisis in the UK that is already costing us a fortune in preventable illness and which the NHS can ill afford.

I suspect that the very very slight - but nightmarish - risk of sexual predation (or rather the fear of it) plays a role here too. If the country's two or three most popular newspapers are telling us that the streets of Broken Britain are crawling with paedos, pervs, feral youths and murderous asylum seekers it's not that surprising that many parents are leery of their kids walking home from school unsupervised.

Nice soundbite from Malcolm Shepherd, but he needs to wise up to the Coalition's localism agenda (it's only been spouting it for two and a half years). The government's response would be that speed limits are (and should be) decided locally.