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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

The fear has nothing to do with "stranger danger". The fear is that kids will get run over by drivers, which happens all the time.

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>The fear has nothing to do with "stranger danger".

The reasonable fear there is helpful citizens + media bullhorning false stranger risk + police bullhorning false stranger risk + just one overzealous officer = recurring CPS visits (and/or neglect charges if officials feel feisty).

I'm a parent of three. Traffic is my key concern. There are more parked vehicles blocking sightlines, taller vehicles, and drivers are more likely to be distracted by their phone.

I walked across a street with a light I had to wait for starting in 1st grade. I was lucky it was less than a mile away. By 4th grade I had to walk most of a mile to a bus stop. By 6th grade I was riding 4 miles to junior high, then 5 miles to high school. The 80s had still had huge land barge Cadillac's, early SUVs

When did I stop going out? When there was dialup internet and MUDs.

80’s cars have hoods shorter than your average child. 20’s SUVs and trucks have hoods as tall as some adults. That’s a major difference. Also, there’s probably more traffic in any given area as there are like a 100 million more people in the US than back in the 80’s.

Tell your kids to not play in the street, to watch for cars when they cross the street, then stop worrying about it.

The absolute number of pedestrian deaths has been plateaued for 50 years despite the population size increasing: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...

60% of pedestrian deaths occur on high capacity urban roads. Kids in light residential neighborhoods don't deal with those roads. Tell your kids to stay away from heavily trafficked roads.

30% of pedestrian deaths involved a drunk pedestrian. Tell your children not to get drunk.

https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...

73% of pedestrian deaths occur at night. Tell your kids to be home before dark.

17% of pedestrian deaths were on freeways. Don't walk on freeways!

https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli...

If you still find yourself worrying despite taking basic common sense precautions, then you should unsubscribe to whatever fearmongering echo chambers you're getting this fear from (reddit and youtube are common sources for this fearmongering I believe.)

> 60% of pedestrian deaths occur on high capacity urban roads. Kids in light residential neighborhoods don't deal with those roads. Tell your kids to stay away from heavily trafficked roads.

And when they have to cross one of those roads to get to school or a friend's house? What do you propose they do?

>What do you propose they do?

To participate in politics to end this farce in American urban planning when they grow up. Like the previous 2-3 generations should have done.

2-3 generations ago, parents weren't terrified of letting their children play outside in suburbia. Or if they were, it was because of previous moral panics like satanism and kidnappers, not cars.

Those aren't the kind of roads that suburbs are made of. Tell them to stay away from those roads. Kids in high density urban areas need to worry about those roads, but this discussion is about the viability of suburbia for children.

Okay, let's make this more concrete. Here's the school district map for Cherry Hill, NJ, a suburb of Philadelphia: https://www.chclc.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?module...

And here's a route from a residential street to one of the schools on that map within the same school catchment area: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/39.9349018,-74.9901605/Thoma...

I challenge you to find me a walking route between those two points that does not involve crossing a heavily trafficked road.

As a parent, I was not concerned with that. But everyone has their own worries.

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