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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

Sure, a reasonable risk is tolerable. But, for instance, car-centric infrastructure has *intensely* exacerbated those risks: space is completely surrendered to cars, sidewalks are non-existent, crosswalks go across 8 lanes of 60+mph traffic. All of this, plus terrible public transport, makes it impossible to travel anyway except by car. This leads to lack of independence for children, and sedentarism.

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It feels like this infrastructural risk is media driven to the extent of "pedophile kidnappers" or "razor blades in apples". For example I grew up in an Eastern MA "suburb" in the mid 90s - early 2000s, characterized by narrow winding roads, fast drivers, and no streetlights. Everyone too young or unconnected to have car access bicycled or walked everywhere; parents were a bit fearful but ultimately acquiescent ("better dead than dumb, and if you're not dumb you won't die"), and cops only cared about trespassing with intent to vandalize.

Over the intervening years, the town added nice wide sidewalks (previously none), fancy crosswalk infrastructure, lighting, and started enforcing speed limits extremely aggressively. Yet the number of people on foot and bike dwindled to almost nothing and now the only ones are older middle aged folk walking their dogs.

I feel you, but this is clearly a “correlation is not causation” type situation. Infrastructure should be people-centric, and there’s nothing wrong with doing things to reduce car speed and make the built environment safe. It is unlikely that improved infrastructure resulted in people walking and biking less, which is what the wording of your post suggests.

(Also, love your username… I thought I was the only one. ;-) )

The wording of their comment did not suggest that.

It did to me as well.

Presumably the infrastructure development itself was not causative, but, the trend occurred nonetheless over roughly the same time course as the development.

I'd actually read it more as asserting the populace has been been so influenced by this media hysteria that even though all this stuff got built, nobody uses it because they've become fundamentally unwilling to let their children walk--and perhaps not very willing to do so themselves.

GP mentioned the safety-related improvements to demonstrate exactly how irrational being scared in their particular community was, and perhaps to lament the wasted effort and money a bit. The before/after was to illustrate the populace was so affected by whatever's happening they actually regressed from previously being very willing to walk in worse conditions.

At least I did until the response you got that didn't say exactly the same. But I still suspect that was the gist, in the original context, and it just got a bit lost in rebuttal.

Dunno about that city in particular but in general car deaths have been increasing over the past decades, presumably because cars keep getting bigger and heavier. It’s a lot safer for kids to cross the street when everyone’s driving a Taurus than when everyone’s driving a modern Toyota Tundra

Is it that the percentage of accidents resulting in fatality has increased, or that the raw number of accidents has gone up overall? Is it just a simple function of more cars on the road, and the compounding effects of such?

The example of the Tundra is legit. Trucks keep getting bigger. It's not really because people all want a bigger truck though, it's because the government outlawed the compact trucks with CAFE and any remaining compact truck import options that might have satisfied CAFE had the shit taxed out of them with the chicken tax. It's a major reason for increased death in pedestrian by truck.

> [...] but in general car deaths have been increasing over the past decades, [...]

Are you sure about that? What's your source?

Some quick searching gave me https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... which even looks like a decrease per capita over the past decades.

No clue whether that source of data is any good, and what the rates outside of the Us are. Just FYI, I don't like car centric places either, and that's part of the reason I probably couldn't live in the US.

The source may be correct, but it’s not useful. To judge the risk you’d need a breakdown of where accidents happen - it may be the case that motorways have become much safer due to safer cars, but pedestrians and cyclists suffered.

Especially modern pickups and SUVs have an increased risk of severe injuries for pedestrians due to the high front area which hits vulnerable body parts where a station wagon would hit legs. You’ll likely find two or more overlapping trends.

Seems plausible. Do you have a source?

Btw, I heard that European cars pose less risks to pedestrians and cyclists?

Deaths for people inside cars have been decreasing, deaths for all other people, such as pedestrians or cyclists, have been rising.

Seems plausible. Do you have a source?

Yep, I grew up in the woodsy part of Framingham up by Route 20. A whole bunch of those roads are outright dangerous. My parents groused about how dangerous it was, but mostly trusted me not to be stupid.

Carlisle, which makes it even more ridiculous :)

Good on your n=1 data, but pedestrian fatalities have been steadily increasing for the last decades.

Also, nothing to do with "being stupid", if there are cars going 60mph right next to where you're walking, it's the luck of the draw whether you get decapitated by a truck or not.

It also depends on where you live. If you are a suburban or rural kid, playing outside all you want is fine. Let them explore the neighborhood. If you live near a highway though, or a high crime area, then you might want to reconsider what you want to allow. You still need common sense.

My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS on you for allowing them a little freedom. When I was a kid living in a trailer park we had neighbors like that. Never called CPS, but definitely complained about us being unsupervised despite the fact that the speed limit was a mere 15 MPH, and that we made a point not to bother the neighbors because our parents told us not to. They just saw kids playing and having fun, and decided it was a crime against humanity.

> a high crime area

What exactly do you expect to happen to your 6 year old? They’re not a very useful target for anything I can think of.

Give me your lunch money!

No, that doesn't sound right.

Other than gangs recruiting young and something accidental (kid caught in crossfire), I agree, I can’t see the very young being targeted.

Most schools have lunch accounts these days, stealing lunch money is no longer possible.

We have a lot of unhoused neighbors in our neighborhood. When they are on bad fent trips, they can get pretty irrationally violent, though I've never heard of a kid being attacked before.

Is “unhoused neighbors” your term for homeless people?

"unhoused" means not having housing.

"neighbors" are people who live nearby, in the neighborhood.

It’s a term for street homeless because the homelessness industrial complex decided to inflate the stats by conflating couchsurfing people with the visibly homeless.

Perverts?

Mostly kidnapped by the parent that doesn't have custody. Once in a while other aunts or uncles who don't approve of the way their brother/sister is raising kids.

In China they might get kidnapped for adoption, at least that is what my (Chinese) wife thinks.

Adoption, or far worse.

That happens in places, but probably not in the places where people living here are.

But if you are adopting from a foreign country beware that it is easy to kidnap some baby from a remote village. Some of the less ethical adoption agencies have done this in the past.

When China was adopting kids to abroad, I'm sure that happened. These days, I'm not sure if child trafficking is still a problem, I only hear anecdotes, and its all domestic (because China doesn't allow kids to be adopted abroad anymore except in very rare circumstances).

China is not the only country adopting. There are places in Africa to watch out for. Though many have stopped adopting as abuse was too common for the benefits.

The big issue for China is that they needed kids staying in the country not going out of it. Even in the 00s, they were adopting primarily disabled kids, and I think that has almost stopped now.

Eh, the big issue with China (and Russia that did the same thing recently), is that it was embarrassing when someone did an international documentary and it became clear that many domestic orphans no one Chinese wanted.

Such extreme privilege right here. Kids that young will be pressured into using drugs and committing crimes, mostly vandalism and theft, but sometimes worse.

That’s around the age when kids started dealing drugs where I grew up. I knew kids who threw bricks through windows and huffed paint when left alone.

Bad areas are bad.

Come on, it’s not extreme privilege. No gang is recruiting at 6.

I don’t know if it was gang affiliated but other 6 year olds were dealing where I grew up.

>Kids that young will be pressured into using drugs and committing crimes

This is DARE level propoganda. What person is spending real money to give a 6 year old drugs?

Altruists?

Where was this, and what convinces you this is widespread enough for concern?

This entire article is about rebuffing the "it happened once somewhere so it might happen anywhere" scare tactic that people use to prosecute well-meaning parents for letting their children experience independence.

Why should it be a crime for a parent to allow there child in the same public where criminals operate? Why should the police punish the victims of crimes for the police's failure to do their one job?

<< Such extreme privilege right here.

I hate to say this, but this is an amazing lack of imagination over what could happen ( based merely on what did happen before and not coming up with wild scenarios ). I am saying this as a likely free range parent ( still internally debating, but a lot will depend on how my kid handles things ).

The underlying problem is the same as the lottery: the human brain adjusts probability on the basis of severity.

Terrible things happen. They aren't likely to happen.

You are definitely onto something. Humans are horrible at estimating risk, but are forced to do it all the time. In some cases, it is a very clear miscalculation resulting in overdoing it one way or another. Sometimes it is just dumb luck.

<< Terrible things happen. They aren't likely to happen.

I think this is the wrong way of looking at this. Most people believe that lightning does not strike people that often. This does not give one has carte blanche to prance around the backyard with a metal rod.

Or, to use less crazy example, my street is relatively quiet and slow. And yet, I still look both ways crossing the street, because you never really know. Individual disposition and approach affects statistics.

Going back to the context of the thread: Not every risk has to be codified into the law, or enforced by the government. Should we make it illegal to prance around with a metal rod in their own backyard, just in case? Making a risk illegal does not magically improve safety, and there is a non-zero probability of the "enforcement" making things worse.

I am with you and, in a sense, you are preaching to the choir. If system setup was up to me, maybe with few notable exceptions, all new laws would require a sunset provision to force bad laws out of existence. I am certainly not arguing that just making things illegal improves safety ( and even when it does, I am not stoked about it ).

As a kid, I swam in our backyard pool during thunderstorms. I sunbathe. I drink alcohol.

I do these things knowing the risk but knowing the happiness they give me outweighs that risk.

Personally, I feel like the benefits to kids of greater independence (developing social skills, learning to deal with being uncomfortable, learning to see things through on their own) outweigh the risks of that independence (sex trafficking or sexual assault, bullying).

Mostly pedophilia and ransom would be my main concern.

That basically never happens with strangers on the street. If you're worried about that, pay more attention to teachers ("nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct") and your partner ("of the girls living with a stepfather, 3.7% reported sexual experiences with him")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#United_Stat...

I'd throw in sports trainers, coaches, uncles and doctors. And not to forget priests and the like, in case of frequent vhurch visits.

The use of the phrase "high crime area" in this context, when just referencing child safety, is itself problematic. Everyone who is reading that phrase right now is forming a mental picture of what it means, and I guarantee it's not a picture of illegally burning garbage in the yard while drinking raw milk, sitting on an unpermitted deck, listening to an illegally downloaded MP3 while making a trade on their phone based on an insider tip they heard from their brother.

There is nothing problematic about having a phrase for areas with high risk of crime that negatively impacts the quality of life of local residents and visitors. (And that includes neighbors illegally burning garbage in their yard)

I'm objecting to the parent comment where this originated, where the author juxtaposed the safety of a child growing up in a "suburban or rural" setting with living "near a highway though, or a high crime area."

Crime is not an urban phenomenon, and when we describe it as one, we're flaming stereotypes. I don't think it was intentional and my point was not to denigrate the parent comment, but to encourage us to avoid accidental constructs like this.

Accidental construct of what exactly? Crime might not be an urban phenomenon in other countries but it certainly is more visible and prevalent in US cities.

At least in west coast cities, visible crime is just a fact of life. It borders on gaslighting to suggest that its not.

The data clearly supports the parent comment:

https://www.city-journal.org/violent-crime-in-cities-on-the-...

Cherrypicking violent crime in a discussion about child safety is misleading and fearmongering.

More children die from non-violent crime. The person who drives 10 over the speed limit down a suburban street is a child-endangering criminal, but so many people think the crimes they commit aren't "real" crimes.

If you want to look at data, overall rural child mortality exceeds urban child mortality in the United States; some of these causes are criminal, others are not. Motor vehicle death are the leading cause of child mortality, and for children under 18 exceed deaths from murder 2:1. Within vehicle deaths, for example, seatbelt usage is one of the predominant differentiators between rural and urban outcomes, and guess which areas have the lowest seat belt usage, and a disproportionately high number of deaths as a result? Yep, those "low crime" rural areas. Those parents who don't buckle up their kids are all criminals, too. I'm tired of seeing the label "crime" only applied to people committing certain crimes, in certain areas. It's applied in the most racist possible way in this country.

I was in a college class that had a mix of inner city and suburban kids.

Ask the suburban kids to describe the inner city? Dangerous. Crime-ridden.

Ask the inner city kids to describe inner city? Community. Know their neighbors.

Maybe try asking the kids who didn't go to college in both places what their opinions are next time.

Why would their opinions differ?

Because people have different opinions? And because college sometimes changes them?

Mind you, I'm not necessarily with the GP. It seems like a question of only marginal relevance. But the parent reads like a low-effort dismissal that doesn't actually address the point.

I just can't see college-or-not influencing perceptions enough to be relevant.

As someone who grew up in the suburbs, and has since lived in a rough part of the city, it also resonated with my personal experience.

In the suburbs, nobody generally knows each other. In the city, due to density, you just have more neighborhood interactions.

Sometimes inner city interactions are uncomfortable or with crazy people, but they're generally non-violent.

If I had to peg percentages, I'd say:

Inner city: 30% awesome/interesting/helpful strangers, 55% ambivalent strangers, 10% unpleasant strangers, 4.5% crazy strangers, 0.5% potentially violent strangers

Suburbs: 15% awesome/interesting strangers, 70% ambivalent strangers, 15% unpleasant strangers, 0% crazy/potentially violent strangers

Ask the inner city kids to describe the suburbs? Dangerous, get pulled over by cops.

Not to support the “what about the children” arguments, but 1) try thinking a little harder, and 2) probably a good thing that nothing comes to mind for you.

What do you think the children of people committing said crimes do? They mimic their parental figures. Child on child violence is a real thing and ignoring it just let's them turn into adult versions of the bullies they are.

Recently, it seems that every year in Washington, DC, there are a few bystanders shot by groups quarreling with other groups. Some of those bystanders have been very young.

There is irony here in that a "high crime" urban area is much more likely to have kids walking around with relative freedom than a "low crime" suburban area.

“High crime” urban areas are still generally safer for kids than car-centric suburban areas because cars aren’t going as fast. Kids are far more likely to die getting hit by a car than from violent crime.

> My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS on you for allowing them a little freedom.

I think this is the real problem, a lack of a low stakes mechanism for resolving small issues surrounding children. No matter if these laws pass, society will have standards and sometimes (oftentimes) good people will fall short of them.

Someone who can deal with a kid who gets a little overzealous at hide and seek or who decides to poke around an abandoned building instead of walking straight home from the store. Police and CPS type organizations seem to be too heavy handed for assisting with normal families that have had a dysfunctional moment, at the same time it feels like there is a need some something (neighbors just talking to each other would be nice, but it's apparently too big an ask).

It's similar to the situation with mental health and substance use disorders. A lot of people need help, and it ends up falling to first responders of various kinds and while they want to help they aren't necessarily well equipped to do so.

This is hyperbole at best. There are entire swathes of the country, both rural and suburban, with plenty of safe places for kids to exist.

> crosswalks go across 8 lanes of 60+mph traffic

Do such crosswalks really exist? Seriously. AFAIK, 60+mph speed is allowed usually (if not exclusively) on Controlled-access highways where pedestrians are not allowed at all. I highly doubt such crosswalks exist at all.

People easily go 60+ on 55mph roads

In what world do you live where people actually follow speed limits?

I grew up with a 6 lane highway with cross walks. I'm sure people hit 60+ even though the limit is 55.theres lights to cross at though

These risks have not increased substantially in the last 20 years, and in many ways they have decreased e.g. the mandatory backup cameras in new cars.

Cars are much bigger (easier to accidentally hit stuff with them), taller (harder to see things at street level) and heavier (take longer to stop and hit much harder) and smartphones greatly reduce driver attention.

I went googling to find evidence to disprove your statement about cars, and I found that you are correct. Though the trend slope is pretty shallow in the graphs I found, I can believe small increases have outsized effects.

...and the smartphone part I obviously wouldn't dispute.

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