Safetyism killed playtime | Hacker News Reader

Safetyism killed playtime

unherd.com

110 pointsjseliger146 comments

My own personal experience. We made the mistake of buying a suburban town home next to a state highway with an HOA. At the time it seemed great but as our kids got older, they wanted to play outside. We’d get letters from the HOA about the kids playing in the street and how that wasn’t allowed cause of the bylaws. We ignored them and let them continue to do what they want. One time a board member tried yelling at the kids and my wife flipped out on her.

Now one of my boys wants to walk outside of the neighborhood. He’s thirteen and at the age I was when I’d run around everywhere on my bike. We don’t have decent sidewalks here and traffic on the main road is 45MPh and they are legit assholes around here who don’t pay attention and are always on their phone while driving. My wife doesn’t want to let him walk to friends and I understand why. Our environments are built for cars, not for people, to travel. Too many stories of Bobby or Suzie getting hit by cars. I’m working to petition the three townships that manage our town to invest in sidewalks cause I’d love for him to be able to run around but at least with that buffer.

So, I get safetyism. I don’t want to lose my children. I also don’t want them to experience life through an ipad so anything they want to do, we’ll go do it. We actually did do a walk down the road a few weeks back, trying to show them how to hug the road or go into the grass to stay away from cars. Once they’re in town, the sidewalks are nice but being right on the edge, we get left out.

Just an FYI, but most municipalities have "sidewalks" legally defined as right of ways. They are available to use even if they are unimproved (grass). So that could be something to look into. Most of my childhood was in areas without paved sidewalks.

The grosser part is that you live in an HOA that can make (and enforce) those sorts of rules.

That’s good to know, I did think that if I’m walking under the powerlines along the road, I’m probably within an easement.

And believe me, I wish we could move, but we are currently priced out of anything else in our town. Our kids are at an age where they do not want to switch schools but as soon as they are all graduated, we will be looking.

I'm glad you mentioned HOAs since I think that they are an underappreciated source of the stultifying blandness affecting modern suburbia.

I don't think I get the point.

Creative, unstructured play and safety aren't mutually exclusive. A kid doesn't need to get a third degree burn or break an arm to "play better", and those are mostly avoidable risks.

The article also missed on developing this piece of information:

> In urbanised environments, where land is at an all-time premium, finding a place to run around can be a challenge. One in eight children don’t have a garden and nearly 800 playgrounds have closed in the past decade.

The reason why modern playgrounds are sort of "guided" and "safe", is that the very few places they are allowed to be built, are those where "guided" and "safe" are requirements. Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because first, there's no enough room for it, and second, the rules of these playgrounds themselves forbid it, as they are written to protect property and lower ownership risks.

Your last paragraph is kind of the whole point - the (predictable) outcome of requiring a playground to be safe results in a lack of places for creative unstructured play, as playgrounds either prohibit it or get shut down.

Agree the article does not make a clear point. I think it conflates several issues. However, risk is now recognised as a necessary component of play:

https://theeducationhub.org.nz/promoting-childrens-risky-pla...

> Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because [...]

I think the problem here is that bigger kids scare the target audience for a playground away. Unless you are thinking 3 year olds roaming a bit kicking a ball?

But I agree on your point. Safety is not a problem, really. Anything that can be climbed is plenty unsafe enough already. There is no need to add stones underneath also.

It probably comes down to parents not having time, or willing to take the time, to take their children to the playground. "Safetyism" is just a scapegoat.

Todays playgrounds are way cooler and funnier than those I had ...

Yeah, but then there are the stories to tell and recount. My friends and I started to play with Dry Ice that we would buy from a local butcher. We basically made bombs, and I almost blew my hand off. NOW, survivor bias for sure, but that story cracks us up every other year.

> Creative, unstructured play and safety aren't mutually exclusive.

I think what you're missing is the difference between "safety" and "safetyism".

The latter is largely an unscientific and unhealthy focus on eliminating any possible risk (at least, of the types that the person in question can easily envision), regardless of the cost to the activities.

As an elder millennial, I have seen the explosion of this mindset during my lifetime. It's why I, when I was 5 years old, was able to regularly play with friends from down the street with no adult supervision (with the consequence being occasional skinned knees and scraped elbows, and the one memorable evening when my little brother had to be given ipecac because he ate—more or less at the urging of the rest of us—a plant that turned out to be perfectly harmless, but couldn't be positively identified by any of us in time to be sure of that)...but today, in many parts of the US, if someone sees an unattended child under the age of 16, they might call the police, and the parents might actually get arrested for child endangerment.

Not because there was any clear and present danger. Just because the child was not being monitored 24/7.

I've been volunteer teaching at my daughter's preschool every other week. Getting this balance right is tricky and it's interesting to see how teachers and other parents at the school approach it.

My inclination is to be pretty laissez faire, partly because I believe in letting kids learn things on their own as much as possible even if that involves some bruises and scrapes, and partly because it's just easier to let 3 and 4 year olds do what they want. I really don't enjoy having any kind of confrontation with someone else's kid, so in the first place I try not to interfere unless it really seems necessary. If I do decide I need to stop them, I first try telling them to stop. This sometimes works, depending on the kid and situation, but often they just ignore it. At that point, I usually just give up and find an actual teacher, since they have no qualms about laying down the law when needed.

The interesting part is how different people's instincts are, and how differently they approach this question. I see some parents who handle things similarly to me, but there are others who are a lot more cautious and strict and don't hesitate to get involved.

The teachers advise volunteering parents to stop anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, and I think that's what is really tricky about all this. There's often not time to think things over so you have to decide in the moment based on your instincts. The teachers know that each parent will handle things differently, and they're ok with that. They would rather have a parent go with their gut and possibly overdo it than second-guess themselves, and I think that's the right approach. If I'm entrusting other adults to take care of my daughter, even if I know they're going to handle some things differently than I would, I'd prefer that they are acting decisively if something doesn't feel right to them.

I think this depends heavily on where you are and if you are just at a preschool or a 'coop-preschool'.

We do the latter, and I was parent teacher. Not a volunteer position: our preschool dues are lower because I worked in the classroom, in a sense it's a "paid" gig.

We had a very relaxed attitude towards personal harm. Getting hurt, crying, and getting better is part of the learning process. Not to say that we excessively allowed kids to get hurt, or allowed them to engage in explicitly dangerous activities, eg: throwing things, hitting kids.

But I did supervise some kids who wanted to "wrestle" and "fight"... I took it upon myself to teach them to "fight clean" and when people were down we would call a break and let everyone stand up and try again.

Also the prechool was mostly outside, and kids got dirty. Oh yes indeed, the mud pit was very popular!

This all btw is in San Francisco.

Yeah this is a coop as well. I think of it as volunteering but I suppose you’re right that technically it’s a bit different since we do get lower tuition in exchange.

This is in San Mateo and it sounds pretty similar to your experience. Very play-based and hands-off for the most part with a lot of outside time. It hasn’t gone as far as sanctioned wrestling matches at this school but I like the concept!

> learn things on their own as much as possible even if that involves some bruises and scrapes

One could even make the case that youth is THE time to learn the lessons to be had in bruises and scrapes, because they are valuable and kids heal like starfish.

Not counting developmental insults like head trauma, persistent environmental toxins etc but like falling out of a tree is usually better than being on a football team

Yep, very true, though if you look with a paranoid eye at a bunch of kids playing, you can often imagine a bunch of head injuries that could occur at any given moment if things were to go perfectly wrong. I think that’s where the over-protectionism comes from.

It’s something you learn to calibrate with experience I guess based on many subtle clues. Kids in general do have kind of an uncanny ‘land on their feet’ ability where even when you’re sure they’re going to mess themselves up they usually end up being fine.

Can’t get too comfortable either though because every once in awhile they’ll try something that really will mess them up if they aren’t stopped.

Safetyism is a contributing cause, but children have far fewer siblings than they used to. This means it's harder to go outside semi-supervised, and parents are more protective of their kids because there are fewer of them. Differences in reproductive strategies result in differences of parental care.

How sound is this argument? It doesn’t pass my smell test as from what I recall 25+ years ago, some of my friends didn’t have siblings. Yet we ran around up until the street lights were on. Looking at people with children in my circles right now though, they would absolutely never let their kids do that.

I'm a only child, and was a free-range/latch-key kid in the 80's. I'm thankful for my neighborhood friends, they were a excellent safety substitute for my non-existent siblings.

I too am a only child, and was a free-range/latch-key kid in the 80's.

We lived on a somewhat quiet dead end street. The neighbor kids were fun but we got into all sorts of nonsense...

I have a very distinct memory of my parents taking me to go furniture shopping at about the age of 8 or 9. It was a fate worse than death. Do you have any idea how boring furniture is to a small child.

I remember coming home, rounding a curve on our street and seeing the end of it. SO. MANY. FIRETRUCKS.

I missed the roman candle fight, I missed the dry pine going up like a torch. I missed the fire department (small town they all came it was an even) and the police.

Dumb luck kept me out of a lot of trouble in my youth. it. It's no wonder im not dead.

>I missed the roman candle fight, I missed the dry pine going up like a torch. I missed the fire department (small town they all came it was an even) and the police.

Sadly, today, those kids would probably have been rounded up, arrested and charged with felony arson, perhaps as an adult in many states.

I remember lighting off fireworks with a neighbor and his older brother. One errantly went into the woods across the street. A few minutes later, we saw smoke. We all went over and stomped it out. Fun times.

I lived a pretty “safe” childhood, and was basically addicted to video games from 5 years old (when the Nintendo Gameboy was released), but notably I still experienced plenty of boredom and unstructured play.

I had a friend 10 minute walk down the street whose parents enforced a certain number of hours outside per day. So he would call me on the phone, we would meet halfway, and then we would wander around the sidewalk and talk about video games or make pretend imaginary things.

I can only imagine in todays technology landscape I would have preferred to stay home glued to YouTube on my iPad instead of seeing my friend; beating Pokémon Red for the 100th time didn’t quite have the draw by comparison

I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised.

I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifically chose a house on a dead-end street full of retirees in order to lessen the danger of one of my children impulsively running into the street after a ball.

It's nuts. I grew up in an NJ suburb in the '90s and I don't have memories of insanity like what I've seen here.

Ditto. It’s not the breathless hysteria about child abduction or (conversely) busybody neighbors calling the cops on unaccompanied minors that keep my kids inside. It’s the insane drivers in 4 ton lifted pickups and the town’s refusal to lower the speed limit, or even post “Children Playing” signs that does it.

Lowering the speed limit isn't going to get the guy in the glass packed souped up Honda who blows through the stop sign in front of my house multiple times a day to actually slow down. That's that dudes whole deal.

It's just going to give highly attentive people tickets that want to get to work at a reasonable speed like 30.

Speed limit signs are almost useless, especially if not enforced (preferably by speed cameras, preferably without announcing their location with signs).

The correct solution to get that guy to stop is to make the street less deadly by design. It should be narrowed, made more winding and have visual 'clutter' added like trees, flower planters, etc. It should be intensely uncomfortable to speed more than 5-ish mph, and people who choose to do so anyway need to meet a traffic calming measure and be on the phone to their body shop well before they speed up enough to endanger a life.

In our neighborhood, some streets have speeding problem. Some neighbors asked city to install speed bumps but the city refuses to do so those because then emergency vehicles will be slowed down too.

In our Canadian city, the speed bumps have breaks that allow wide-axle vehicles (buses, emergency vehicles) to pass with minimal braking[0]. Some large passenger vehicles can get through the same way, but for most vehicles it's a speed bump.

The issue with speed bumps is that it's just not a good traffic calming design. Why should a vehicle slow down to, say, 20 kmh at random spots when the limit is 40 kmh? Traffic tables[1] are much better, in that if they're properly installed, you don't need to slow down if you're already going the speed limit. They should be installed at pedestrian crossings to make the crossing level with the sidewalk (cars go up and down) instead of being level with the street (pedestrians go down, then up). The street should be narrowed at pedestrian crossings too, and at all intersections (no parking there anyway).

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/sQLFu4zs4AkjNF6r6

[1] https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/stre...

> at a reasonable speed like 30.

Hitting a kid at 30 is going to cause some harm. I don’t think that 30 is a good compromise.

They are rare where I live but street layouts which promote better driving would help. They have low/no kerbs and wind through planting etc to keep speed down.

However this messes up a commute to work, so unfortunately it’s not a perfect solution.

If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars. Hitting someone with a 5000lb chunk of metal at any speed is going to cause harm.

The solution here is just to not hit them to begin with.

I think it's 30mph is a reasonable speed for not hitting people.

30 MPH is not in no way a reasonable speed for side streets in a neighborhood that you want to be walkable and child-friendly. Save 30 mph for major arterials. If neighborhood side streets have 30 mph speed limits people are just going to blow through any stopsigns the city puts in to pretend it is pedestrian friendly, and they are going to kill people when they do so.

The likelihood of severe injury or death goes down dramatically with lower speeds. A reasonable speed is a variable concept, but certainly minor residential streets should never have speeds in excess of 40 kmh (25 mph). My city recently reduced the limit to 40 kmh on all such streets. Now they just have to go the other 95% of the work - physically designing the streets for their posted limits, so that the option of speeding is simply removed (unless you're okay with regularly spending money at a body shop).

> If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars.

Careful, some people actually want to ban cars.

What will "Children playing" signs do? The concept always amused me. Does anyone seriously think a driver, having already made a decision to be a speeding asshole, will change their behaviour because of some lame, barely noticeable sign? It's even sadder to see those homemade ones people put up on the boulevards.

Your city failed to properly design streets and enforce traffic laws. This happened because, over many decades, the voters in your city wanted it to be so, and voted accordingly. Unless the attitudes of voters change, and/or people who want this to change but don't vote in municipal elections start voting, no amount of "think of the children" signs will ever make a dent in the situation. And, while we're at it, slapping a 40 kmh (or whatever American equivalent) sign on a wide straight "residential street" where you can comfortably do double that speed without risking a trip to the body shop is about as effective.

Physical re-design and effective (preferably automated) speed enforcement. Nothing else works, no point wasting steel and paint.

Are "children playing" even effective? Do you think the dangerous problem drivers are actually giving a shit about them? Similar for speed limit signs unless you have strict and regular enforcement. Although at least the prudent drivers would obey those.

Nope. I keep mine out hoping to affect even 1% of speeders - mostly parents who are speeding but really should know better.

IMO traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are. In the US, licenses do need to be easy to get otherwise you lock people out of society (unfortunately), but they don't need to be easy to keep and you should drive with constant awareness that you will be taken to the cleaners for mishaps.

Automated enforcement tech should be widespread and incur license revocations and salary/wealth-adjusted fines left and right.

License revocations are only effective for people who respect rules.

There are tons of "minor" infractions committed by people who see themselves as perfectly responsible and law-abiding. And they are to the degree that they wouldn't drive without a license and would be legitimately deterred by that threat, but they just view various infractions as a normal part of driving (because they are, as our enforcement schemes make clear!)

Or who fear consequences. That means enforcement has to be effective enough that people know there’s a high risk of consequences - for example, if driving on a suspended license means your car is sold at auction, people will care a lot more about following safety rules.

Meh, having a suspended license doesn't actually stop you from being able to drive.

Both physically you don't have to swipe in to drive but also legally you can still drive [1].

[1]: https://www.graciamintz.com/blog/2021/march/how-to-get-a-har...

"licenses do need to be easy to get"

This is what allows the situation we have. People either don't get caught, or only get caught after injury has occurred.

"traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are."

It depends on the infection. Many are already severe, such as being arrested for racing, going 25+ over the limit, DUI, etc. DUI is a factor in about a 3rd of fatalities and is already punished severely. Seems like the punishment focus isn't working. The preemptive education portion is more promising.

If education worked, we wouldn’t see stats going up contrary to the rest of the world. The problem is that enforcement has declined radically and drivers have learned that there will be basically no consequences for anything short of a fatality and often even then it’ll be minimal.

One of the big problems is that the early signals are ignored: the guy saying the dead pedestrian “jumped in front” of his truck now almost always has a history of things like speeding and signal tickets, parking violations, etc. but as long as that doesn’t interfere with their ability to drive, they’re just being trained not to treat it seriously.

What I’d like to see is a progressive escalation of natural consequences: more than one speeding or light ticket in a year and you can’t keep your license without showing that your car has a speed/acceleration governor installed, more than a few in a year and your license is suspended for a month, etc. The focus should not be on money but reinforcing the idea that driving is dangerous and if you refuse to be safe you will lose that privilege.

"If education worked, we wouldn’t see stats going up contrary to the rest of the world."

This isn't really true. Most other developed nations have much stricter licensing with much lower fatality rates.

Yes, enforcement is definitely an issue too. Progress penalties and fines tied to income levels (or vehicle values) would be a good start.

It is really true. There are various causes being debated but we’re the only rich country where the fatality rate is moving in the wrong direction:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/12/10/briefing/oakImage...

The source article covers why some of the theories can’t explain the difference on their own:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/briefing/us-traffic-death...

I can't read your pay walled article.

"It is really true. There are various causes being debated but we’re the only rich country where the fatality rate is moving in the wrong direction:"

I'm not sure we're on the same page with what I'm taking issue with. The requirements to get a license are a joke in the US. The other nations with lower fatalities have stricter licensing. Yes, it won't explain it on it's own, but it is highly correlated and supported by studies around stricter licensing in other nations and graduated licensing in the US.

But your claim that if education worked the stats wouldn't be going up has no basis in anything you've posted. The overall licensing has not improved in the US. The jurisdictions in your chart have much stricter requirements.

The graph is not paywalled, and that’s really most of it. You can use IA for the rest:

https://web.archive.org/web/20231211115919/https://www.nytim...

The general point, however, is simple: neither the US nor our peer countries significantly changed licensing requirements in the last 10-20 years. We didn’t suddenly stop doing public safety campaigns, either, but the United States is the only country where the fatality rate suddenly started going back up. The licensing hypothesis could explain why our numbers are higher in absolute terms but not that stark, sudden increase in legality – even if we made the license exams much easier in the mid-2010s, that wouldn’t affect the majority of drivers who already had their licenses by then.

China has 10x the road traffic fatalities per capita than we do. People ask if China is safe, and...they never really look at traffic fatalities numbers which are way more significant than getting stabbed to death by some guy at a drum tower. Beijing is the only place I saw someone die before (bicycle ran a red light, taxi was speeding through the intersection at a yellow light, its weird how everything goes at slow motion at the point).

I've actually had pedestrians jump in front of me before at green lights in North Seattle on Aurora, which is famous for traffic fatalities. In this case, the problem aren't bad drivers, but fentanyl. Sometimes the pedestrians really are at fault. Also, we design our streets like ass; e.g. encouraging pedestrian and car traffic at the same time along with ample pedestrian-obscuring on-street parking (you really can't have both!). In this case, yes, the cars need to do the right thing, but that's made difficult enough that tragedies occur way too often. We need to get the Dutch to teach us how its done.

Pedestrian fatalities in the US involve alcohol about 50% of the time by at least one party. 38% of pedestrians killed have BACs over .08.

I wonder if they have tracked fentanyl yet? It seems like the numbers would evolve just substituting one substance for another.

Similarly, 16% of pedestrian fatalities were on freeways. 59% were on non-freeway arterials, while 22% were on local streets.

It seems like individual pedestrian can do quite a bit of risk mitigation by staying sober and out of traffic.

These stats match my anecdotal experience where I have had numerous close calls as a driver due to pedestrians where they shouldn't be (eg people on the freeway), but no close calls while walking sober on Surface streets.

DUIs are not punished nearly severely enough. I used to work with an alcoholic who had been arrested multiple times, for all sorts of things: Fighting, property damage, indecent exposure, racing, going +100 MPH on a suspended license, etc.

He was arrested for his 4th DUI and was upset because, according to him, he "got the book thrown at him". His sentence? 6 months in county jail, with 5 days per week of work leave. He only spent evenings and weekends at the jail. A few months in, he faked some letterhead for a landscaping company and sent a letter to the judge, claiming to be the company, saying they just hired him and they were requesting a 6th day of work leave. The judge allowed it, so now this guy would just leave jail on Saturday morning and hang out with his elderly parents all day.

He saved money while in jail because he would work all week and then sleep at the jail, so he had no rent to pay. He was arrested for his FOURTH DUI, and came out financially better than when he went in. He was practically rewarded for it.

In my opinion, a DUI should mean 5 years in prison with no possibility for a shortened sentence, your second DUI gets you 10 years, and your third is an instant life-sentence. I've had too many people in my life killed or paralyzed by inebriated drivers. I have literally not one single drop of empathy for anyone who drinks and then gets behind the wheel. In the case of an accident, I think it's actually immoral that they are provided any level of medical care at all. If they caused the injury or death of someone else on the road, leave them in the ditch to crawl out themselves. Let them take accountability for their actions, because obviously 6-months in county jail isn't fixing the problem.

Some states are more strict than other. That seems extremely lenient. They are generally misdemeanors or felonies that would cause many people to lose their jobs. Your part about faking work release is really a separate issue - did you report them?

Most states will not issue you a license if you have multiple DUIs. So he should have been on a suspended license, which should have drastically increased the penalty in most states. It seems the judge may have been ignoring sentencing guidelines if it was so lenient.

When he was arrested for his 4th DUI, his license had been suspended. Because of this, his dad bought him a car so he could get around (doesn't make sense to me either, haha). So he had a suspended license, no insurance, he was drunk, and driving 100+ MPH down an empty country road when he was arrested. I know all this because I bought his car from his mom, and I'd drive him to work from the jail on Mondays and Tuesdays and he'd complain about how unfair his life was.

But therein lies the problem. It shouldn't be up to a judge's opinion on how much time someone with a DUI should receive. Just make it a flat 5-year sentence across the board so we don't have to worry about how the judge felt that day.

I don't see the work release issue as a separate issue. People with DUIs should have no single recourse of action to leave state custody until their sentencing is complete. You've proven you're a danger to society, it would be irresponsible to toss you right back in. There should be no work release, no reduced sentence, nothing like that. If you voluntarily risk the lives of others on the road, you give up 5 years of your own life if you're caught. I think that's exceedingly fair.

"There should be no work release,"

I would say that about half of the people in county who had a job and didn't lose it get work release. That's not specific to DUI.

My main point is he provided fake documents about landscaping. That should have been reported.

"If you voluntarily risk the lives of others on the road, you give up 5 years of your own life if you're caught. I think that's exceedingly fair."

I think the system most states have in place is fair today - usually one diversionary program with probation, fine/costs, interlock, etc if nobody was hurt and there was no property damage. Penalty tiers based on BAC level. Progressive sentencing based on details like not your first time, someone got hurt, property damage, etc.

Plenty of things depend on the outcome for the severity of the punishment. I do think that is fair to increase penalties based on the circumstances and results. What we really need is better education. Although stricter penalties or education aren't going to help people like the guy you say thinks his life is unfair. Perhaps rehab as his attitude sounds like an alcoholic.

These are fair points, but I personally still want more punishment. I'll admit I probably don't have the clearest mindset when considering these things either, because I've had too many people around me injured, paralyzed, or killed because of drunk drivers. I'm at the point where I am literally incapable of feeling any level of empathy for anyone who voluntarily drinks and then gets behind the wheel because of how much it's affected my life, directly and indirectly.

My grandparents, my high school girlfriend, another girlfriend just a couple years ago, my best friend's brother, a coworker, 2 great uncles... All people in my life who were either injured or killed by a drunk driver. Hell, one of my uncles was literally run over outside of his car by a drunk driver. He survived but lost his leg, and he couldn't ever breathe right after the accident...

That's not to mention all the indirect drunk-driving deaths that I've dealt with via mourning friends and family. It's very difficult not to be incredibly calloused at something that is so, so destructive and yet so, so easy to prevent. Like, literally if you had just called an Uber my friend would still be alive, I'm sure glad that you saved $20!

...Y'know? No easy answers, at this point I'm just venting a little bit. :) Thanks for the response and for reading my spiel!

Going 15mph over is a crime in a lot of states (like NC), which is bonkers.

By contrast, DUI is not nearly severe enough. It should only be a misdemeanor if it's <= .10. Anything over .10 should be a felony.

In my mind, just increasing penalties will have little effect (except excluding more people from society adding an overall drag). They need to do better at educating to avoid it.

What on earth does "educating" mean in this context?

Do people not know how to read a speedometer? Do they not know how to read a speed limit sign?

I'm talking mostly about DUI. But yes, even with speed limits. A stricter licensing program with better education could fix a lot of the issues. Most people don't understand vehicle dynamics. If they had some basic understanding about stuff like 2x speed is 4x stopping distance, it might wake them up. Most drivers do risky things without realizing they are risky because they are so ignorant, even when following the speed limit. Many other developed nations have lower fatalities and stricter licensing (even when speeds are unrestricted like the autobahn).

> licenses do need to be easy to get

Only if society continues to be centered around cars.

Yep, but if we can change that then the problem as a whole gets mitigated quite a lot.

That won't get you anywhere. If you require cars, you'll get misbehaving cars, as they come in no other format.

What fixes this is creating collective transportation. Multimodal and capillary transportation options that people can use. And after that, you just phase cars outside of the city.

Obviously not true. There are gradations of strictness in driving behavior. Driving in Germany, for example, is a totally totally different experience from anywhere in the US.

Your memory must be bad because I remember cars driving down my suburban street at highway speeds in the mid 90s. The lesson imparted as a kid was to always look both ways, assume no one sees you, and get in and out quickly.

If you haven’t taught your kids to not impulsively run after balls into streets, that’s on you. Even my 3 year old knows better than to walk into a street after a ball. I literally watched him stop and look both ways yesterday too before walking in to grab his ball.

Yes, drivers should slow down in neighborhoods but an ounce of prevention is always better than a pound of cure. You have more control over your kids than the crazies that exist in this world.

Ditto 70s

The ounce of prevention should be much earlier and much more preventative. It's the fundamental street design that needs to be changed so speeding is no longer an option.

I agree with this. I would argue that an even worse contributor to danger are the neighborhoods where everyone parks on the street, either because the neighborhood homes have no driveways or because it's such a high cost of living that most houses are rented out to 3+ individuals leading to overflow parking. I roamed the streets as a 90s kid and while I dont remember if people drove faster/slower then (I do remember there being less traffic, but that's subjective and fallible) I do remember being able to look down most of the block when I crossed the street. But in densely populated areas, going between parked cars (especially as a short child) greatly obstructs the view.

It’s not just bad memory: in the 90s, cars were considerably smaller and less powerful – yes, people had 70s barges but those had much lower acceleration than an SUV and the driver was less insulated from the road and had better visibility. The other big change is Google Maps/Waze/etc. — most people did not know every possible side street and tended to stay on major roads more.

To your other point, yes, people need to teach children to fear cars but that also means grownups should be thinking about how much public space we’ve taken away from everyone to remove responsibility from drivers. It’s not unreasonable to think that balance is unhealthy, just as most of us have decided that we shouldn’t have factories in neighborhoods any more.

Distraction plays a huge part these days. When I was growing up in the 80's and 90's, drivers drove. Now they're watching TikInstaXFaceTube and relying on lane departure warnings and brake assist to do the driving for them.

> If you haven’t taught your kids to not impulsively run after balls into streets, that’s on you.

I have. My children aren't perfect. They make mistakes like most children do.

I'm glad to read that your three year old does not. That's awesome! I'd love for my children to never fall prey to their own impulsivity.

The inner peace from having successfully imparted computer-like unwavering conscientiousness to your child must be unparalleled. I'm envious.

They’re pretty good. Maybe spend less time being a NIMBY and more time raising your kids and you’ll find they too can do impressive things.

Will do.

I hope for the sake of those around you that your child(ren) never run afoul of your expectations as "My children would never…" parents are a special breed of annoying, nearly as much as "I raised my obviously-better-than-your-children child to…" parents.

I think it's the mixture of a general lack of exposure to reality in addition to harboring the mistaken belief that their method of parenting is superior which makes them so annoying.

It's almost as if they think their advice is universally applicable and failure to implement it is somehow a personal failing in every instance, much like those pig-headed folk refusing to acknowledge the systemic issues behind poverty, insisting instead that every poor person is poor from a lack or work ethic or gumption.

Thankfully, many people grow up and eventually stop trying to use (not-so-)universally-applicable advice as a cudgel, preferring instead to interpret the complaints of those around them in the most charitable light since, after all, asking "Did you try raising your children right?" is as useless and demeaning as asking "Did you try turning the computer off and on again?".

You wrote several paragraphs when what you said could be summed up as, “I’m lazy and look to shift the blame of my circumstances onto others because I can’t be arsed to take control of the hand I’ve got and run with it.”

And PS, turning it off and on again solves almost every electronic problem. So yes, do try raising your children right.

As little troublemakers in California, a friend and I used to play a prank. We would stand next to light poles on opposing sides of a neighborhood street, at dusk, pretending to pull an invisible line between us. The faster a car would drive through, the farther we would throw ourselves onto nearby lawns. Some of the cars were VERY fast (50mph) despite the short runway from the corner, a few houses down.

Teaching every single kid to be cautious doesn't scale. Kids are inherently irresponsible anyway and it's not like cars only kill kids either.

> Yes, drivers should slow down in neighborhoods

They shouldn't. If they need to consciously do anything in the first place then the street design is unsafe.

Interestingly, humans have keen senses of danger. Think of crossing a wide and straight two-lane street with cars parked alongside it vs a narrow, winding one-way one with no street parking.

For example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh4H9qZ-_6Y&t=195s

Ironically, the presence of lots of little keyholes results in a sprawlier urban form that results in things being spread further apart and funnels traffic into massive, wide arteries, which encourages in-city speeding habits.

Not blaming you for picking what works for your family, it's just a "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Old fashioned streetcar-suburb cities that are just dense, gridded traffic are safer.

For example, in Toronto:

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/our-most-dangerous-streets-...

Since the article is paywalled, here's the Tweet showing the dangerous-intersections map:

https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1509864492703916037

And here's a blogpost showing the age of neighborhoods built:

https://idragovic.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/toronto-building-...

So basically, at least in the case of Toronto, postwar suburbs with winding and dead-end residential roads with wide, high-speed corridors produce dangerous intersections.

There's a great video by the urbanist youtuber Not Just Bikes about this very topic - he ended up moving to the Netherlands so his kids can safely play on the street and independently meet up with friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw

It doesn't even take terrifying drivers; really, it's all cars. It wasn't until I got to know some four year olds that I realized how little regard they have for cars. Squirrels have more respect for the hazard of moving automobiles.

Well yeah, they're 4 years old. They need some level of supervision if they have little survival skills or common sense. There has to be some level of supervision until a minimal level of survival is possible (assuming we want near zero losses).

The mayor of a municipality in Istanbul proudly announced that they built walls around a small city park to keep kids safe.

And I was the only weirdo who asked why they didn’t put measures in place against speeding drivers instead.

People see completely normal to take their kids to this walled garden that looks like a prison yard with a few trees and a playground.

This hysteria of every stranger must be a criminal and everything is dangerous successfully pushed people into compartments.

Eastern Europe is honestly much more free than all the places I’ve been. To be honest, Eastern Europe does have safety problems but it’s mostly about self harm caused by nihilism, maybe that’s part of the reason why people don’t freak out about everything in first place but when I’m in Eastern Europe I feel significantly less stressed than when I’m in the UK or Turkey.

Maybe an approach somewhere between Eastern European nihilism and Western “everything is extremely important” mentality must be reached.

Put the speed bumpers against the maniacs and let the kids learn how to operate without the safety nets.

Like at the ending of “Demolition Man” movie, maybe some of us need to take stuff a bit more seriously and others relax a bit.

Also Eastern Europe has by far the highest road crash fatalities - according to Eurostat[1] Romania tops it. So some worry might be earned... even when other people are less stressed about dying in a car crash.

https://actmedia.eu/daily/eurostat-romania-the-highest-rate-...

True. Also unhealthy diet, tobacco and alcohol abuse is problematic too in the self harm department.

However the solution shouldn’t be ban everything and regulate the environment up to babysitting levels.

I live in Brooklyn in Bed Stuy, and my neighbor who has lived here his entire life told me how he used to play football in the street everyday in the summer when he was a kid. There was always a pick up game, and when I asked he said occasionally a car would need to get past and they would finish the play, and then wave it by.

Today, I don't let my daughter step one foot into that street for fear she'll get swiped by an Ebike or an Uber driver in an Escalade doing 40.

Drivers today have an expectation of complete ownership of the streets, and kids lost one of their few play spaces.

So you chose a house on a dead-end street but also are still afraid to let your children play outside?

I let them do it much more than I used to; closer to normal than zero as it used to be.

I've found even living on a dead-end street is not enough. I live about 3 doors down from the end of my street, and people still fly down the street at 50+MPH, turn around at the end of the dead end, and then fly back the other way at 50+MPH.

- They aren't even going anywhere, but still have to speed while doing it! -

My only explanation is that they're just idiots. It doesn't make any sense to me.

some time ago i crossed a street that was no longer than 200m. both ends had buildings forcing you to make a turn, yet an idiot managed to race down that short piece of road at full speed. his rear view mirror slammed into my backpack. nothing else happened. luckily the street was otherwise empty at the time. it usually isn't.

when i see someone speeding like that, i imagine myself with a bazooka... (well, actually i'd rather have one of those guns from scifi movies that just vaporize the target, or better yet, just vaporize the car, leaving the driver sitting on the street dumbfounded.)

Great observation. It's not inherently the street or urban/suburban design that changed, something else has changed.

I'm house sitting in a gated community area of Irvine, CA for the week. I was walking down the sidewalk and watched a woman drive past me, staring down at her phone. I thought to myself, she's going to get into an accident. 10 seconds later, she's up on the curb, luckily misses a tree, corrects and keeps on driving as if nothing happened. F'cking nuts.

Crazy new drivers have always been around. you probably just live in a more populated area now. I remember People ripping down my roads in the 90s.

I live in Denver proper. And there are three middle aged men in pickups that essentially terrorize the neighborhood in their lifted Ram pickups. Constantly doing 45+ in a 20, if a car tries to park or pull into a driveway they curb hop and freak out. Cops refuse to do a thing about it, probably because they're clearly on the same team (white, male, wraparound Oakleys, tan hoodies with flags on the shoulder, gun stickers on the truck, etc...). But I'd be insane to let my girls run free in the neighborhood with that threat. I'm a competent cyclist and I've nearly been killed by two of them.

Gah! That sounds terrifying and infuriating.

It's not so scary here; mostly 20-somethings with no life beyond "car culture", AFAICT.

I live in an NJ suburb. If I see a car speeding around I’ll ring their doorbell and ask them to stop. If they don’t, first warning is air out the tires and second warning is losing your windshield. I’ve never had to ask three times.

How do you track them down if they're not neighbors?

My favorite toys, when I was a kid, were these sheet-metal rocketships and speedsters.

They would have flint flywheels, and would emit a shower of sparks.

Cut you to ribbons, and set things on fire -FUN.

Also, I had a fully-operational steam engine that took Calcium Carbide rocks (acetylene source).

My dad taught us how to make bows from long bamboo garden canes and gardening string, then notched small garden canes with fire-hardened points to use as arrows.

We used to set up ramps on the road in our estate while it was still being built, using piles of sand and planks left behind by the builders. Then, we'd get some airtime on our BMXs. I still have a scar on my chin today from going over the handlebars.

Back garden fires were a regular occurrence as well. We'd be unsupervised, playing around with flaming sticks, or throwing things into the fire, such as aerosol cans.

None of this seemed to bother my parents.

Then, when my own son was about eleven, I taught him how to breathe fire. It was heavily supervised by me, and we practised with water for an hour until he had the technique down, and I let him have a go with paraffin. He did it perfectly. I recorded it.

I showed the video to my dad, and he was extremely angry that I had taught my son this, seemingly forgetting all the wild things he used to let us get away with when we were children.

I suppose my point is that this is not really a generational thing, but a societal one. Regardless of your generation, in modern society, all adults have a heightened perception of risks, real or imagined.

In general there seems to be a growing attitude of moral outrage towards people who tolerate a bit of risk. As though we all have a moral responsibility to preserve life and safety at basically any cost. It's insane to me. Calculated risk is the spice of life. It also allows for a sense of self-mastery as you overcome your own fear of the unknown by facing it down.

People even have the nerve to criticize those who have an apatite for risk as "selfish," as though they have a moral obligation to not making other people sad or upset by their possible injury or death. Absolute madness.

Canadian Paediatric Society published this last week: https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/outdoor-risky-play

A lot of this has to do with parents' choices. Specifically, choices in where to live and how to raise their kids. It's still plenty possible to enable free, and free-ish playtime in the US, but teaching kids to respect risk has to begin young.

I live in a top 10 city -- San Jose -- with crazy commute traffic up and down the peninsula. But we chose to raise our kids on a two block long street with a church at one end and a park at the other. We get very little through traffic and they play outside largely unsupervised. As they get older, they bike to school independently, to their neighborhood schools (.75mi elementary, 1.2mi middle/high). When they're K-3rd, I bike with them to teach them safety rules. The older ones in middle & high school are on their own, commuting back & forth including staying after school for sports practices and events. We did buy them phones in 6th grade for our benefit, but I generally feel like by age 10 they're able to make pretty reasonable decisions on their own about most things, and know when to ask if they're unsure.

It's critical, imho, for parents to focus on things like this in the early years because by the time kids are in middle & high school they're going to naturally start becoming more independent and must be able to assess situations and make smart decisions (or make stupid decisions and learn from them). Too much restriction on play and independence ultimately results in incomplete development, which can have cascading effects as adolescents transition into adulthood.

There are people in this very thread who bought houses in obviously crappy neighborhoods complaining about their crappy neighborhoods.

There are some neighborhoods where walking down the street comes with an especially notable risk of getting robbed. That's a bad neighborhood. Everyone agrees.

There are other neighborhoods where playing in a park comes with an especially notable risk of Karen calling the police, who respond. That's a bad neighborhood too.

It might not be as simple as "choosing" to live in a nice neighbourhood.

What's interesting is if you go to countries like Costa Rica, there are still more opportunities for kids to be kids. The US has created a helicopter parenting style along with many other western countries. Kids don't learn important things that playtime gives them and turn out more neurotic later on in life with much lower resilience.

This is only a phenomenon in the anglo-world. Kids are still allowed to be kids in the rest of the world (where they are much more mature and physiologically healthier than American kids).

I think that's a rather limited experiential take. Rather depends on the neighborhood where you may see kids outside playing freely or not. Regardless:

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-g...

Wouldn't you agree China is outside of the anglo-world view?

Wouldn't you agree that is limiting how kids can be kids?

This is the old "things aren't the way they used to be" complaint. Always a crowd-pleaser, but also an inevitable constant and not necessarily bad.

It's also really weak how it throws "safetyism" in there even though it doesn't even try to connect it to playtime.

To me it feels like it's purposely conflating the inevitability of change (along with its attendant discomfort), the physical safety of children, and the invented political wedge concept of "safetyism" for the clicks. Just more dumb crap.

It's also unclear how much "safetyism" is responsible for the changes in play vs some of the million other things that are different from decades ago.

It comes off as a cheap shot to me, and a rather dumb one at that. E.g., adding the pejorative "ism" to added to

When I was a kid, 7 or 8, my Dad would give me 50p to go down to the local pub and buy him 20 cigarettes and a half-pound bar of chocolate (I was not allowed to enter the pub, but there was a take-away window near the entrance), total cost 48p. When I returned home he always said "and where's my change?"

Getting a half-pound bar of chocolate (and cigarettes!) for 48p seems like quite a deal ;)

Once upon a time, a friend of mine and I, when we were 12 or so, road an inflatable pool boat down a canal all day seeking this trash dump where all the porn magazines were dumped that another friend of mine had shown me once. That was a lot of fun.

Rather happy that my daughter is in the Scouts here in Norway (Note: there are two scouting organizations here, religious and non-religious. My daughter belongs to the latter).

Learned to use knife, axe, hammer and saw. Learned to cut wood. Learned to make fire. Camping trips. Long trips in the woods. With the local scout leaders making it very clear to all parents that yes there will be times when they come home after having cut themselves or other injuries - but there's more than enough of adults who know first aid.

Camping trips where they learn canoeing, fishing, foraging, making your own food, etc. And lots and lots of unstructured play w/o active supervision.

One of my favorite things about Texas is the fact that their playgrounds are actually dangerous with real risk.

At one playground, there are these rings you crawl through to go from one part to another. The rings are attached by chains and the gaps between them are wide enough to slide through. I wish I had a picture these things were so awesome.

There are other playgrounds with ropes and climbing walls with significant height on them like 12 feet.

This wasn’t the case back east and in California.

I love it and so do my kids. Boo boos are boo boos. They’ll be fine.

the boo boos are fine, but what about medical costs? Thats a component that I hear nobody talk about with safetyism. Can you imagine what a $15-20k bill for a broken arm (ambulance, ER, surgery, medication, follow-up visits) does to a middle or lower-class family? This a major factor to why people sue, because they can't afford these kinds of boo-boos.

Average out-of-pocket cost for a broken bone is $2,500. Certainly not nothing, but kids don't break a bone every month or probably even every year, so it doesn't seem like too wild of a number in the long run.

You can extrapolate this further. Why would I allow my 15 year old to start driving? What if she gets into a car accident, and I have to... shudder... pay her medical bills? I think the potential monetary liabilities of your children's life experiences should not be the focus, or even something considered too much.

When I was in 4th grade, I knew a kid who fell off a playground, got a sharp pinecone seed behind his eye, and broke his back. He's healthy today, his back and eye are okay, and his family is doing fine financially. Breaking a bone won't destroy you physically or financially, but thinking that it will just makes the urge for safetyism stronger.

As with so many issues in modern America, guaranteed health care could help. A vigorous social safety net would deter safetyism, an incorrect preemptive optimization.

In other places it's free though. Well, parents are taxed for the universal healthcare but they're not taxed extra for their kids.

I remember at least 3 hospital visits while I was a kid. One because I managed to get something in my eye that didn't go out without specialized equipment, one because a scratch infected and had to be cleaned surgically, and one because i fissured? (don't know the english term, not completely broken) my middle finger. All fixes free ofc.

Incidentally I spent a month during summer with my middle finger up in a cast. I was too young to fully take advantage of it though.

Chronic unwellness due to a lifetime of sedentary activity and lack of consistent exercise on the other hand... that can often break the bank. Habits that define us for our entire lives start as children. Wont happen for literally everyone, but the majority of kids who are force to spend unstructured time outside will eventually figure out how to enjoy it, and will be that much healthier their entire lives as a result.

$2500 is the low end that does not require surgery [1]. Which I presume is the ER visit itself. With surgery we're back to my original estimate of $15-20k. My claim is not that kids shouldn't play (or that your daughter shouldn't drive a car, thats a bizarre non-sequitur). It's that people are more litigious, and the medical costs are why.

> Breaking a bone won't destroy you physically or financially,

You knew one kid who got hurt and recovered, ergo medical bills from injured children aren't ruinous to the families (or single parents) that raise them? Thanks, I can sleep easy tonight.

1. https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-a-broken-bone-...

> Average out-of-pocket cost for a broken bone is $2,500.

44% of Americans cannot afford to even pay a $1,000 emergency expense[1]. $2,500 would crush most people.

> Why would I allow my 15 year old to start driving? What if she gets into a car accident, and I have to... shudder... pay her medical bills?

Um... this is actually a calculation many people seriously do. The potential cost of devastating medical bills absolutely plays into the risk assessment of everything we do in America.

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/many-americans-cannot-pay-fo...

I submitted a story about a slide for kids: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442577. And the only comment was about how it would lead to lawsuits. This is a slide, something kids have used for 100+ years.

As a future parent, this is something that really concerns me.

On the one hand I want to be a good parent and protect my (future) children, but on the other hand I don't want to be over-protective. I feel like it's a pretty hard balance to strike these days.

Have to recommend the book "50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)" by Gever Tulley. I think he still runs a camp where they promise the kids will come home with band aids.

Safety third

I'd like to commend the site for having an actual close button on the stupid 'subscribe to the newsletter' popup.

it wasn't just safetyism.....it was city planners ....density with no parks and greenspace....terrible design to favour numbers over happiness.....that was far more damaging....

I love the header image of that article!

I looked like that, most days.

I broke 3 arms while I was a kid. I was lucky I didn't break a neck.

I think safetyism is just fine.

At the same time?

Two were.

I had it in mind I was going to be a stuntman when I was young, and took glee in scaring the crap out of adults by pretending to crash my bike, fall out of trees, or off of structures.

Whatever I learned from those years of risky play I credit with helping me to go on many exciting adventures and and engage with a variety of ill-advised recreational pursuits all while keeping myself largely intact.

I think think the argument is cut and dry as one might think. What's a few broken bones if you're stunted socially, independently, and creatively through regulation and rules. Exploring the new world with friends of your own age without adults putting you in their mental box makes you your own person. I think it's underappreciated what that enables.

Completely agree, the point of life isn't to reduce risk to zero - it's to make life wildly abundant and beautiful. Joy and creativity should be prioritized heavily over safety. That doesn't mean you don't have safety as a priority, it just means joy should factor more heavily into the equation.

I doubt much progress and improvement would be made simply by increasing lifespan. Comparatively, if you inspire a generation of kids to be pioneers and explorers I imagine you see a vast improvement in technological advancements and social progress.

These things are hard, if not impossible, to measure, but I don't think it takes too much extrapolation from other measurable events to find this to be true.

Super nice. What books/ideas do you recommend?

I'm not sure what you're asking, recommend towards what end? I have no idea how to inspire the next generation. Right now I'm working hard towards financial independence and improving my health so that in 10 years or so I can dedicate all of my energy towards something that excites me and hopefully benefits others.

I guess if I was to contribute an idea that I think more people should adopt, it's that I believe people are most happy when their existence improves others lives. To that end I think we should optimize towards having the most healthy years with the most freedom to explore ways to be useful and bring joy to others. That means being frugal and investing wisely and focusing on the delayed gratification that early retirement will bring.

I find that it's hard to give from a place just surviving, but if you can delay gratification and work hard towards being in a place of surplus, you'll have a lot to offer and hopefully that leads to a very joyful and meaningful life.

> simply by increasing lifespan

To this point, there is a growing push to consider “healthspan” rather than lifespan in terms of medical outcomes. It turns out that being alive hooked up to tubes confined to a bed isn’t all that great.

Breaking a bone is a serious injury. It doesn’t always heal properly.

People jokingly say that kids bounce, but sometimes they don’t. It blows my mind that people treat broken bones in kids as not a serious injury.

Are you lucky, or are necks less likely to break than arms due to evolutionary pressure?

Could just be survivor bias. I wouldn't be posting here if my neck had broken, most likely.

Also, children are suprisingly resilient and will recover quite easily most of the time.

The bounce back game is real as a kid.

Maybe it's all about mass. The force on my knees landing at 200lbs is way greater than at 50lbs.

But maybe I'm just trying not to feel old.

Mass, height, and the mechanics of momentum (as when, say, tripping) all make a difference. Some of the terms involved have exponents applied. Adults definitely feel a lot more force from mistakes made while moving their bodies than kids do.

Well, arms are much longer (so, a larger lever), and people instinctually extend them to blunt the fall. Whereas it's instint to protect head and neck in the same situation.

"Children are far less free than they used to be. While 71% of Boomers and 80% of Gen X recall playing in the street as children, only 27% of children do today."

Freedom is being allowed to get run over in the street!

Either you're over-estimating the risk, or you think kids are playing in streets with 45+ mph limits.

Quiet neighborhood roads are fine to play in.

A fine example of how hyperbole and fearmongering is used to make a healthy parenting decisions seem irrational and irresponsible.

Getting a massive "Old man yells at sky" vibe in this thread (and HN in general).

Safety laws are written in blood. Whenever a new regulation is passed, it is often in reaction to some horrendous accident.

A lot of the comments below are of Boomers who played with unsafe toys or took risks, but they also had some limited supervision from at least one parent.

In 2023, both parents are working, so supervision is much more limited.

On top of that, like another poster mentioned - cars are fairly dangerous now, and plenty of young drivers are driving pretty massive hunks of machinery that didn't necessarily exist in the 70s or 80s.

Edit:

Gotta love people 20-30 years older than me downvoting me to oblivion.

I can guarantee you I'm not 30 years older than you because I'm not even 30 years old, but I definitely think the downvotes couldn't possibly be more correct, lol.

"SafEtY LAWS arE wrITtEn iN BloOd" honestly made me laugh out loud because of how incredibly predictable and rote it is, but the rest of the comment was pretty funny, too. It reads like a recipe on how to construct a maximally neurotic society. I don't think being hyper-aware of potential boo boos makes for a mentally healthy individual.

Drink from the hose, play in the street, climb 80 feet up in tree, I don't care, just try not to die. I did all of this when I was a kid and more; I never broke a bone, and I never died. Sometimes I got my ass kicked or I got some some cuts, bruises, and scars, but I'm alive and I've got stories, and that's what counts. Depriving a child of that seems literally cruel to me.

Supervision? My parents had absolutely no idea where I played. Except that I was probably 1km away or less...

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