Ref. 71732-04SWINDON'S youngsters have backed up research which says labelling today's children couch potatoes is unfair.

The town's Economic and Social Research Council in North Star commissioned a study into whether children really are chauffeured around by their parents nowadays.

A study of more than 895,000 individual trips taken by 156 people aged 10 to 60 found that youngsters today walked nearly as much as their grandparents.

The study, carried out by the University of Lancaster, found that walking still accounts for 60 per cent of trips taken by 10 to 11-year-olds.

The researchers found that those born between 1932 and 1941 did walk more than young people today, with around 88 per cent of journeys made on foot compared to 64 per cent now.

But they said the difference was not as great as might have been expected with growing affluence and car ownership and the widely-held belief that children were driven everywhere and walked less.

Despite a predictable increase in car use, for 17 to 18-year-olds walking and using buses remained important, accounting for over 75 per cent of all trips.

The researchers, led by Prof Colin Pooley, also found a drop in the number of children travelling around unaccompanied, probably due to increased parental concern about crime and abduction.

But even so, more than half of trips by children were still taken without an adult, the study found.

Children aged 10 to 11 said they were nervous about being abducted or run over when they went out on their own.

But respondents who were the same age in the 1940s swam in dirty canals, played in air raid shelters and did not tell their parents about encounters with perverts.

Prof Pooley said: "We suggest that this reflects the much greater publicity given by both national and local media to a small number of specific events such as child abductions and related dangers."

Researchers said more atten-tion to the needs of pedestrians, should be discovered rather than just one solution for everybody.

"Many everyday journeys are undertaken on foot, but this is a form of travel that has been marginalised in much transport policy," Prof Pooley added.

But Ron Winter, 73, a retired roadworker from Shaw, said he thought there was a definite difference between his generation and youngsters today

He said: "I like to walk if I can. Being disabled I can't drive the car, but I like to walk instead of taking the bus. My youngest grandson doesn't like walking. It seems that his age group prefer to travel by car."