I’ve seen this 2015 documentary of some sort from the perspective of Japanese vs Australian kids being able to commute to and from school on their own without parental supervision. The thing is that parents in Japan encourage kids to be independent from a young age without being “babied” too much while apparently in Australia it’s common for parents to drop kids at school.
Now: why is it common for American parents to either drop kids off themselves or kids using the stereotypical yellow school buses on commuting to school rather than letting the kid use public transport themselves or walk to school on foot on their own? I’ve heard that a father got arrested in the US just for letting his son walk to and from school due to accusations of “child endangerment”.
In my part of town, there is a local highway we have to cross to get to school. As there is no crossing guard, I will go walk them. This walk us like ten minutes, no problem. However, once kids go to the other schools in town the walk goes from 10 to 30 minutes easily. Since the kids still have to cross that highway that no one cars to safely stop, we have to drive the kids. So in this case, poor driving skills and poor pedestrian safety is why.
Where I grew up a bus was needed as the schools were too far away to walk.