Lights are on now for the school run and we all need to allow extra time to look out for everyone else on our journey to school. Unfortunately SMIDSY collisions ("sorry mate I didn't see you" ) happen at any time of year, but in the dark and wet it's worth making an extra effort to see and be seen. How to learn good road positioning - to see and be seen Good road positioning for our children crossing the roads or cycling to school becomes even more important when drivers' visibility is worse due to the weather, low sun, mist, fog, rain, darkness. Some drivers set off before completely clearing a frosty windscreen so have a very narrow field of vision. Others are distracted by mobile phones or toddlers. And all brakes are less efficient in the wet. If you haven't taken advantage of the free cycle training from Cycle Confident we strongly recommend that the whole family signs up. The course includes where to position yourself on the road and at junct...

Yuck. The roads are slippery, visibility is poor as it gets darker earlier, numbers of pupils at Dulwich schools are growing and congestion is as bad as ever. Those who sensibly take the 'quiet' back streets were shaken by the recent news that a child was knocked off his bike by a speeding van driver on Eastlands Crescent; another child crossing between queuing traffic was hit by an adult on a bike who didn't see him. Luckily no-one has been seriously hurt so far, but we hear about lots of 'near misses' as a result of thousands of children struggling to school on horribly busy roads. Despite the conditions, some schools report a dramatic increase in bikes while they've been working with Tim Warin over the last year.  Dulwich Hamlet leads the way with 10% cycling to school "pretty much every day", and many more on scooters and on foot. Brilliant! It's also very refreshing to see schools with larger catchment areas (and the greatest proportion of...

When we met with the Dulwich Society and local residents in the summer, several people raised concerns about air quality. Unhealthy levels of pollution exacerbated by the school run is recognised as a London-wide issue , and t he Southwark School Travel Plan Team reports that parental car usage in Dulwich is the highest in the borough:  "up to 40% of school journeys being made by private car".  There are several factors leading to high car use for the Dulwich school run including patchy public transport and higher than average journey distances. But i t's in all of our interests to reduce car use for the school run: according to the Environmental team,  children suffer the highest exposure to harmful traffic emissions when  in the car  in the flow of traffic . What can schools, children and parents do to help improve air quality in their immediate area? Last year six primary schools across Southwark (including Bessemer Grange) took part in the Southwark...