Safe kids and School excursions

It's impossible not to notice how many young kids are on the streets going on school excursions or walking to and from school. Because we used public transport so much we had the opportunity to see how schools and kids use the transport system.

You often see groups of 15-20 kids as young as 5-6 with a couple of teachers going on an excursion. We saw these groups in all kinds of weather including cold and very wet. School excursions must be very common here. They don't appear to book a bus, they appear to use public transport or walk.

The kids are dressed up in warm weatherproof jackets and waterproof trousers with a high visibility vest over the top. They are usually holding hands in a line or holding onto a bright red rope with a teacher at both ends. This was common and we saw multiple groups of kids on most days when we were out. 

It was just as common to see quite young kids(9-10yo) walking themselves to school without any supervision. They seemed completely relaxed as this was just business as usual. This was very common in Finland but also reasonably common in Austria.

I have couple of possible theories:

• The streets seem to be very safe, i didn't see any examples of crime and rarely saw any dodgy people that we felt we needed to be careful around. Particularly in Finland but less so in Austria where bus and train stations seemed to attract some more concern
• Parents seem to be more trusting than in Australia, I wonder if our hyped up media coverage and our fears is not turning us into helicopter parents?
• I assume that school excursions are encouraged within the schools system and the processes to conduct an excursion are not too difficult to meet.