Along with the opposable thumb, walking is what differentiates humans from the lesser primates -- bipedalism, evolution experts like to say, is precisely what led to greater brain development and civilization as we know it. As for walking to school, it's part of the American pastoral, from Tom Sawyer, who traded tall tales with Huck Finn about warts and dead cats en route to the schoolhouse, to Ramona the Pest, who immortalized a Portland neighborhood not far from my own and who walked to school without adult supervision -- or authorial censure -- when she was only 5 years old.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, where liability insurance for kids who walk or bike to school has become one of the major challenges facing SR2S advocates. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency funded a $96,000 Portland project to develop a Walking School Bus -- in which groups of kids walk designated routes to school under adult supervision -- at a local elementary school. Organizers spent months mapping safe routes, conducting outreach to parents, and running criminal background checks on senior citizen volunteers, only to have the project collapse in the absence of liability coverage for kids who might become injured or go missing. A senior-citizen-led walking school bus in Larkspur, Calif., met with a similar fate, according to Kallins.

"The fact that one would have to even consider kindly senior citizens being sued for walking kids to school says a lot about our culture," she observed.

The risk-management mentality in K-12 education grew out of a litigious climate in the 1980s, said Glowacz, who led a session on SR2S and liability during the September 2004 Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference in Victoria, B.C. -- a presentation that drew more than 160 people. To limit the liability for schools, he said, courts ruled that districts can be held responsible for "willful and wanton negligence" only if they were aware of an imminent danger and didn't do anything about it.

Many schools have interpreted "willful and wanton negligence" by banning or discouraging organized walk and bike programs. (The ironies multiply; if a child is hit by a car while walking to school, Kallins points out, the driver, not the school, should be held responsible). In a case that has become part of SR2S lore, the superintendent of Wauconda Community School District 118, the site of Glowacz's data-gathering project, temporarily banned kids from cycling to all schools in the district last year after a boy who had been walking his bike near the school grounds was hit by a car driven by his gym teacher.

The prohibition inspired Glowacz -- and community members -- to adopt an aikido approach to the problem at Wauconda Elementary school. They used the research procedures of SR2S (called SRTS by the Chicagoland Bike Federation) to fulfill the school's liability mandate, a plan that succeeded because the data so clearly demonstrated that the evil, in this case, came from within. Since the data proved that the real danger was caused not just by drivers, but by drivers during drop-off and pickup times, Glowacz was able to argue that the school had to do something to change the situation. "The [liability] focus shifted from kids on bikes to kids being dropped off at school," he said.

Many SR2S programs have also found liability coverage through local police departments. It's also worth noting that SR2S liability insurance is much less of a problem in the U.K. and Australia because of universal healthcare coverage.

A partnership of parents, teachers, planners, health advocates and the private sector, SR2S comes as close as you can to a village raising a child in the United States. With its feel-good emphasis on kids, the program also offers the bike and pedestrian movement an unparalleled opportunity to build enthusiasm -- and acquire funding -- for sustainable land-use and transportation practices.

And yet, as a parent and a pedestrian advocate myself, I'm well aware of the contradiction that governs the entire walk-to-school movement: the thrill at seeing hundreds of kids walking to school during organized events such as International Walk to School Day on Oct. 6, tempered by the twinge of discomfort at their Nike sponsor-clad bodies, the police escorts, even the "on message" signs about the health and exercise benefits of walking to school. This isn't your father's walk to school.

As Engwicht points out, under SR2S, adults view walking and biking to school as a transportation problem -- how do you get kids from home to school as safely as possible. But for children, walking to school is not about transportation, much less health or exercise. "It is about the chance for an adventure," Engwicht said. "To spend time with friends, to explore the physical environment, to build a relationship with the built environment and develop a sense of place."

Roerty, of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking, agrees. "We've forgotten the kid in the program," she said. She cites her own daughter, who likes to cut through people's yards on the way to school, as an example. "Kids like risk." she said, noting that some experts have jokingly proposed renaming the program "Un Safe Routes to School."

Among alternative transportation advocates, the dictum is: "Everything old is new." But can a fearful, risk-averse car culture afford kids who wander to school instead of walk, who explore alternative routes, who stop and smell the flowers and splash in rain puddles?

Engwicht proposes a system of "activity nodes" throughout the city, where adults would sit and watch children as they moved from place to place. "SR2S, including the Walking School Bus," he said, "needs to lift its focus from overt, constant supervision of children to covert, background supervision." It's a kind of wireless-networking approach to the problem, and perhaps one small step toward the ultimate goal: devolution of SR2S into its lowercase counterpart, walking to school.

But for many advocates, that move is still off in the distance.

"It's madness," said Clark, referring to the need for programs encouraging people to walk. Unfortunately, he said, the state departments of transportation haven't done enough on their own. "Hopefully Safe Routes will turn it around."

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