Can technology be leveraged to improve child independent mobility?

Spend enough time in a suburban community and you might notice the lack of children moving around freely as was once common. Child independent mobility (CIM) refers to that freedom of children to be away from constant direct adult supervision as they move about their own community. CIM has a positive impact on a child's physical, social, and emotional development and there seems to have been a considerable decline in its prevalence in communities today. We believe that technology can be developed to help increase CIM through both hardware and software solutions. This paper presents a survey that was done of parents about their thoughts and experience with their children and the amount of independence they have. The survey focuses on how their children get to school and their thoughts on how technology could be used to help increase independence.