Eroski Consumer has analyzed the environment of 100 schools located in 10 Spanish cities, in order to check if class inputs and outputs are safe. The main conclusion that has been obtained is that the road safety of the surroundings of the schools analyzed is valued only with an “acceptable”, since there have been notable deficiencies.
Among them: not all specific access for students are clearly indicated, in one of every three schools there are no safe waiting areas before entering the building, and in 55% of the chaos there is no speed limitation signaling.
In addition (and this is serious), in 45% of the analyzed environments, there are no vertical signs of school zone, or frequented by minorsBy cities, the best valued school zones were those analyzed in A Coruña, Bilbao, Pamplona, San Sebastián and Vitoria (they obtained a 'good'). The rest (Barcelona, Logroño, Madrid, Seville and Valencia) were rated with an 'acceptable'.
School zone analysisHow do we move to take children to school?
As everyone knows, it is possible to choose between going on foot, by bicycle, using school transport or public transport; without using the vehicle itself. Of course, as the distance increases, the chances of going on foot are reduced and other forms of travel are imposed.
Interestingly, and although users have the option is to choose public transport, In almost one in five of the school zones studied, no stops were found near the school. And when the presence of the next stop has been noted, they are mostly bus, followed by tram and subway.
Eroski Consumer has taken another step in this direction, because they have also wondered if these stops (near schools) are located on straight lanes where there is sufficient visibility for pedestrians, and yes it is so in 97% of cases
Do you remember when we said that the children of Portland go to school by bicycle ?, well, because in Spain, in two out of three school environments there are no bicicarriles, with arriving on two wheels to those schools, it is almost more a risk What an option.
I leave the car for the end because it is the means that I like least to reach the school (although I must admit that I do not need it): only parking spaces reserved for private transport (and for the collective school) are observed on one of every five occasions .
Security near the school
68% of the sidewalks closest to the center they were wide enough to travel them comfortably without agglomerations (more than 5 meters on average) and mostly its pavement did not slip.
In this sense, Pamplona stands out where in the surroundings of one of the schools studied, fences were observed that separated the sidewalk from the road. The City Council of this town installed in 2009 approximately 500 fences of this type in the environment of 37 educational centers in order to improve the safety of children and young people who travel daily to schools. In addition, around 300 have signs that indicate access to pedestrian crossings and the nearest bus stops.
And at school, it should be noted that The 100 educational centers observed have a fully enclosed perimeter, each one of them having two specific entrances for students. The study considers that on three out of four occasions the accesses have enough width (an average of four meters) so that no agglomerations occur.
And on the other hand, although 90% of the schools are correctly marked by means of an identification sign (name and type of center), student accesses are not.
Frequently the furniture or traffic signs are located without paying much attention to the pedestrian space, hindering or hindering the passage. The most repeated impediment is street furniture, especially the trees, and there may also be vehicles that obstruct the passage
The signaling gives security
Pedestrian crossings are marked with well-painted road markings (in 88% of cases), although they are not always accompanied by vertical signals or traffic lights. In only 28% of cases, pedestrian crossings have lighting, 14% are high, and 12% have traffic calming bands.
Although in most of the school areas analyzed the speed of approach of vehicles at crosswalks is adequate, for the traffic in the area there is no speed signaling that remembers where the vehicles are, and at what speed they should go.
The Eroski Consumer study has also discovered that to access almost all selected centers (93 percent), the road had to be crossed at some point, and that In three out of every four school zones explored, there are crosswalks at the crossings that refer children inside the schools. Virtually at all crosswalks, there is good visibility when crossing.
Another danger that can arise when walking on the sidewalks is to cross the access of a parking lot. This only happened in half of the cases and of them, only in 43% there were visualization mirrors in all or in some of the car parks observed (it happened mostly in Vitoria, in six of them)
It is in the rush hour of entrance or exit of the school when those who go on foot, by bicycle or use public or private school transport coincide. So that it becomes the moment when more dangerous situations can occur. During the inspection, on one of every five occasions there were retentions and traffic jams in the accesses to the schools, although only eight times there were occasions of danger during the access or exit at rush hour. Although it should be mentioned that only in 25 centers in the 100 areas analyzed has the presence of police or volunteer personnel been verified.
The issue of security in access to schools is very important given the vulnerability of children. According to the latest mobility survey of the Ministry of Development, each child up to 14 years travels an average of 3 times a day: Most of those trips are to go to or from the educational center and when they do daily activities and almost always move on foot.
The short stature of the kids and their unpredictable reactions increase the risk of an accidentNor are their vision and level of hearing fully developed, so their perception of public space is different from ours. However, the responsibility of offering them security is for adults, this study can be very useful when the corresponding entities intend to adapt access to schools, to benefit the main users of this center.
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