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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in Africa.

We had snakes going through our yard, every day, that would make you brownulate your jodhpurs. We had bugs that, when they bit you, hurt for a month.

My favorite toys were these painted sheet-metal cars and spaceships, with flints and sanding wheels. They would spit out showers of sparks.

I survived.

But ask any parent that has lost a child. It's absolutely devastating. I know a number of them. I never, ever want to tell them that their child's life is worth less than my freedom from inconvenience.

It's really not a black/white issue, and I have no answers.

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>But ask any parent that has lost a child. It's absolutely devastating. I know a number of them. I never, ever want to tell them that their child's life is worth less than my freedom from inconvenience.

Sure, but when safety is the primary concern then nothing gets done. Too many car accidents? Just ban cars. You can't have a car accident if there are no cars. If safety is your primary goal, then surely something small like "getting from A to B faster" is a small price to pay for the life of a child!

But this isn't feasible. You can't run a society based on this concern. Everything we do carries risks. Some are more hidden, others are more accepted and for some reason we single out specific risks and become unreasonable about them. We selectively pick and choose what we're outraged about in the name of safety.

> Sure, but when safety is the primary concern then nothing gets done. Too many car accidents? Just ban cars. You can't have a car accident if there are no cars.

I think you’re missing the part of these debates that is an honest conversation about utility and how to balance the needs of the group vs. the needs of the individual.

That’s why we both care about car safety and don’t ban cars. It doesn’t have to be as extreme as either A) No safety rules, maximum freedom. Or B) Maximum safety, no freedom. The middle option is what you see a lot: some safety, some freedom.

That’s why you have cars with airbags and kid’s chemistry sets without hazardous materials. Some safety, some freedom.

You can debate about the utility, but I doubt anyone in the pro-50s chemistry kit camp would be OK with including radioactive isotopes or deadly viruses. At some point the learning experience isn’t worth the risk at which point you’ve gone through the exact same thought process: how much safety do I want vs. how much freedom?

So I think we all agree there needs to be some safety concerns, the question is where and that will always be a grey area with no right or wrong answer. Everyone’s utility will be slightly different. But just questioning safety as a goal itself doesn’t make much sense IMO. We all want safety and we all want freedom, just different amounts of each.

I mean, cars are the most dangerous way to travel. I think it would be better if we could build cities that didn't have cars.

But are we not then taking the slippery slope of an infantilisation of society? surely we need to round the sharp edges, but eliminating danger, you do away with adaptability, reaction time, self responsibility, fun.... I rollerblade on the road, some people drive dangerously just because they don't like I'm not following the rules... Also was just in Egypt, I highly enjoyed jaywalking there, less so being a car/minibus passenger , saw what looked like 6 year olds on motorcycles with their friends, kids driving cars, preteens at the helms of trucks...were there more accidents? maybe not, dunno, maybe the lack of alcohol is a reason... but ultimately I agree huge zones with no cars in cities, more space, cleaner air, less danger...

1.) People who drive dangerously are danger to others.

2.) Cities that don't require cars to move in are raising freedom of both kids and adults living in them. It means kids go by themselves to places sooner. It means old people are not so locked. It means parents don't have to be taxi drivers every time kid wants to try a hobby.

I used to travel, regularly, to Tokyo.

The corporate headquarters that I traveled to, on a train, had a girls’ school, next to it.

I would often be on the train, packed with commuters, and see these tiny little girls, in their school uniforms, maybe seven or eight years old, alone, on the train.

One of the big reasons that this was possible, is because of the civil and social infrastructure of Japanese society.

This structure is one that many Americans would find stifling —for good reason, but it also means that elementary school girls can take the train, alone, to school, everyday.

You don't even have to go to Japan. In Germany, first graders go to school alone too. Same in Switzerland - sometimes even younger kids. I think that United States with the 11-12 years old is considered too young to go to school alone is the outlier.

> were there more accidents? maybe not, dunno

Death rate per 100k inhabitants is roughly 4 times higher in Egypt compared to the US (44 vs 11) which is still quite high compared to eg Germany (4/100k)

Could you provide a source?

per 100,000 motor vehicles per year 12.4 USA 148 Egypt

per 100,000 inhabitants per year 14.2 USA 12.8

Arnt the higher figures in Egypt because theoretically there are smaller proportion of people to the number vehicles...?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...

Egypt: 42/100k https://web.archive.org/web/20200520081209/https://www.who.i... USA: 11.1/100k https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db400.htm Germany: 2719deaths/80million =~ 3.4/100k https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Traffi...

Different years, different data normalization, but the general point hopefully holds.

> Sure, but when safety is the primary concern then nothing gets done.

Incidentally, this is part of the reason why it is cheaper, faster, and easier to build large infrastructure projects outside the West, and why the rate of innovation slows as societies go from developing to developed. Basically, there's some (possibly defined?) sociological cut-off point where societies become more concerned for safety vs possible benefits of the risks they take and eliminate the risk-taking possibility altogether. Before that cut-off point, "life is cheap", and that has all sorts of benefits and detriments for society, after that cut-off point "life is priceless", and that has all sorts of benefits and detriments to society.

Like anything, it seems it's a trade-off without a clear "best" way to do things.

> I never, ever want to tell them that their child's life is worth less than my freedom from inconvenience.

This is why a healthy society needs social institutions which insulate people from having to constantly defend freedoms and other pro-social behaviors from emotional appeals. The fact that we are so vulnerable to such appeals causes scaling problems in societies as large as ours today.

It's not a black/white issue and I don't think it has to be handled like one.

It's possible to that allow serious exploration without exposing children to toxic chemicals. I think you can let children walk by themselves and play by themselves without discarding any worry about child safety. Etc.

The OP is what my younger friends would call a "boomer rant". And despite being a "boomer" myself I no sympathy for a "the problem today is people are too worried about safety" viewpoint. Today's world is complex combination of good trends and bad trends, not merely a matter of "now lawyers run everything".

It doesn't have to be the problem to be a problem.

As for the labels, I'm late genX / early millennial, but I broadly agree with the premise that safety concerns are excessive in modern society, and that causes adverse social effects that are often unaccounted for.

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