Cycling To School
Cycling kids are confident kids, more independent and brainier to boot. Just 15 minutes cycling to and from school could make a real difference to your child's fitness, establishing habits of healthy activity that could be life-long.
Most kids don't get enough exercise
Experts say that to stay fit, children need at least one hour of moderate physical activity every day (for example, brisk walking or cycling). But only six out of ten boys and four out of ten girls get that
TV and computer games may be part of the problem. Another is the habit we've developed of driving our children to school and social events, over distances that would have been walked or cycled by previous generations.
Cycling is one of the best forms of exercise you can get. Doctors say that adults who cycle regularly have, on average, the fitness levels of people ten years younger.
Cycling makes you fitter, more alert, cleverer
A more active lifestyle now, continued into adulthood, would greatly improve your child's chance of living a long and healthy life. Physical inactivity is a far greater cause of heart disease than smoking, yet we take it much less seriously.
Daily exercise has many immediate benefits as well. They include improved bone strength, muscle tone, healthier joints, increased alertness and improved academic performance.
Teachers often comment that children who walk or cycle to school arrive brighter and more ready to learn than those driven by car and a recent US study showed a positive link between physical activity and performance in school tests.
Cycling encourages independence
By allowing children to make their own way to school you can help them to become more confident and independent, which is especially important in the transition from primary to secondary school. The school journey is an ideal opportunity for children to learn road safety awareness and other life skills.
For many children, cycling is simply more fun and more sociable than going to school by car, and they love the feeling of freedom it gives them.
Cycling is good for the planet - and your neighbourhood
If more children cycled to school it would be good for the environment, nationally and locally - less traffic congestion, less pollution and fewer of the emissions that cause global warming.
You may feel that one fewer car on the road in the morning won't make any difference. But the more people who decide to cut out the school run, the safer the streets will be, and the easier it will be to encourage others.
We know the benefits, so what's stopping us from letting our kids cycle? Safety is the number one worry for many parents.
Fortunately, serious accidents involving child cyclists are rare - much less common than those involving child pedestrians or car passengers. Fewer than 20 per cent of all road accidents involving primary school children occur on the journey to school.
The risks of cycling are dwarfed by the health risks of lack of exercise. In 2000, 125 people were killed while cycling. In the same year 125,000 people died from coronary heart disease, of which an estimated 45,000 were caused by inactive lifestyles.
