You didn't need to. I bet most places in the US are safe for your kids to bike to school. I see kids walking and biking to and from school all the time in my neighborhood. Never heard of any problems with it.
I am interested about your experience since mine is quite different. In the last 10 years I have lived in Vancouver, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Sunnyvale, Saratoga and now in Spain. I was also choosing “walkable” neighborhoods and in my experience there is almost no places in the US or Canada I would feel safe letting my daughter ride her bike to school. For example, I was biking ~4 days a week from Saratoga to Mountain View and the schools surroundings were the most dangerous section of my commute. Lines of parents dropping their child's with gigantic SUVs ready to right hook my ass. I was having close calls almost every other days and this is in some of the wealthiest zip code in the US. I am sure there is some places where walking and biking is possible but this is the exception.
Davis is one of the only examples i could think of. I do know some folks in MTV who are lucky enough so they walk their children to school but unless you live a few blocks away and you don’t have to cross a 2-3 lanes stroad on the way, it is possible.
Sadly for tech geek, EU job market is quite a bit harder than the US. Luckily, remote consulting allows me, for now, to live basically anywhere.
Unhelpful without giving a location. In Denver (a supposedly bike friendly city) I would never let my children ride to school. Not due to crime, but thanks to unruly motorists who are driving commercial sized pickup trucks and SUVs like they're sportscars.
