I have some practical responses to that, but at the end of the day, physical activity needs to be valued by our society. Parents should see driving their kids to school as socially unacceptable.
Right now it's expected. If you walk your kids to school, people ask why you aren't driving them. As a society—and I think this is where the federal government could play a strong leadership role—we need to ingrain the value of physical activity into our social and cultural norms. If we do that, then as they're building cities, city planners will think about that, because they will value physical activity. When schools are being built, our leaders will think about where they're being built, because they will value the role physical activity plays in the health of our children and youth.
This is a significant issue that I think needs to be addressed. We need to ingrain the value that physical activity plays in our society. We need to work with the media. I think a lot of this danger is perceived because we hear things today a minute after they happen, whereas before we didn't. I think we need to work with our media partners to ensure that the messages are somewhat balanced.
We also need to work with our community leaders, such as the children's health services that are saying kids shouldn't be outside playing by themselves. Again, that goes back to not valuing physical activity within our culture.
We also need to work with our school administrators, because even if you have a great walking school bus or wheeling program to schools, if the school doesn't have a safe place for you to lock your bike, kids are not going to wheel to school.