I live ~1 mile from the local school complex (primary, middle, high all share a gigantic piece of land, though are separate full-size schools). You literally don't have to cross a street to get there from my house - it's all neighborhood walking paths and there's a short underpass at the one road. Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. There's a bus, which isn't the end of the world. Except in the time it takes to wait for the bus, you could walk most of the way to school. And 1/4 of the parents drive their kids anyway.
It's completely absurd.
Of course, I walk the ~1 mile to my office in the other direction and most of my coworkers think I'm a loon. So, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Americans are just hard-wired to drive even the shortest distances. We've done such a piss-poor job with urban planning and transit design that 3+ generations of Americans think anything but a car is unthinkable (literally, I don't think it crosses their minds).
Reading these comments reminds me that America is a big place and experiences are very different from one location to the next. My closest school has hundreds of kids walking to and from through all the neighborhoods if you drive by during morning or afternoon hours.
My last in-office job had numerous people with 20-40 minute walks as part of their commute (except in rain/winter). We had people who routinely biked 10+ miles to the office.
It's not "Americans are lazy". It's the people you're around.
According to the school. They don't like releasing kids on their own for some reason. neighbors wanted their son to walk home alone and the school said the kid could either take the bus, or a parent could show up and walk him out. Yes, for the same ~1 mile walk I describe above, that's all paved paths in a very safe neighborhood outside DC (Reston VA). Not all of Reston is like this, but out are is VERY walkable (~1 mile to schools, ~1 mile to shopping, ~1.5-2 miles to the town center and Metro station).
I remember an Irish cousin of my mother’s moving to Reno, NV in the 90s. She used to dry her laundry on a line outdoors, where the 40° heat meant that it would dry in minutes. Well, the neighbours found this bizarre almost to the point of being offensive and she got kind of ostracised for doing it… and then she had to join in with what everyone else did and used the dryer for 2 hours burning electricity to achieve the same result that could have been done in 1/4 of the time for free.
I live ~1 mile from the local school complex (primary, middle, high all share a gigantic piece of land, though are separate full-size schools). You literally don't have to cross a street to get there from my house - it's all neighborhood walking paths and there's a short underpass at the one road. Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. There's a bus, which isn't the end of the world. Except in the time it takes to wait for the bus, you could walk most of the way to school. And 1/4 of the parents drive their kids anyway.
It's completely absurd.
Of course, I walk the ~1 mile to my office in the other direction and most of my coworkers think I'm a loon. So, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Americans are just hard-wired to drive even the shortest distances. We've done such a piss-poor job with urban planning and transit design that 3+ generations of Americans think anything but a car is unthinkable (literally, I don't think it crosses their minds).