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> US child pedestrian deaths 1975: 1632. US child pedestrian deaths 2019: 138.

Does this reflect safer streets, or just fewer (esp. unsupervised) child pedestrians?

It's fewer children in the streets. Sorry, my firsthand observations are my source. (anecdotal evidence)

This. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen a single kid play outside (apart from the park near me) for well over 3 years

We live in an HOA-governed community in Central Florida. Our kids play in an alley just cross the road from us with a bunch of other kids from the immediate area. Streets are marked 25mph and everyone knows this community is rife with children. We've still had 2 or 3 near misses in the past 3 years and that's just including the kids within 1 square block from here. It gives me anxiety just thinking about it, but we do our best to warn them of the dangers; get them looking both ways; and put out "Kids at Play" signs to warn drivers.

I think those signs are hilariously ineffective. "Don't run over kids." Oh shit I hadn't been watching for pedestrians until now!

They don't do anything, it just increases alert fatigue.

I disagree, I do appreciate these signs and do try to pay more attention to blind spots in those areas.

>> Does this reflect safer streets, or just fewer (esp. unsupervised) child pedestrians?

Probably both. The streets are probably "safer" because there are fewer pedestrians-car interactions. We now have walking trails and such separate from roads. And driving kids around in vehicles might be bad environmentally, but if we are talking about traffic deaths then it is a legitimate tool (ie busses rather than kids walking to school).

I suspect much of it is simply that kids no longer wander around on roads. They spend less time outside and when they do it isn't near roads. But the numbers between the 1970s and 2020s are so dramatic that one must conclude that roads are generally safer places for everyone today.

It reflects that parents (accurately) deduced that roads were too dangerous, and now keep their children from interacting with them as much as possible. Given everything I've read about the hazards of children especially in the face of oversized trucks and SUVs, if anything, kids are more in danger than ever: both from drivers on the public road, and from their own parents being unable to see them around their massive Suburbans. https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger...

Yeah I'm not trusting the completely faulty metric of "parental instincts". Given that more intelligent people breed less, the avg parent isn't as smart as the avg person. And we know how smart the average person is.

Your article is a perfect example of misjudging risk. Roughly 100 kids die in pedestrian accidents per year. Even if those SUVs are doubling the chance of an accident, those SUVs are only a portion of all vehicles on the road, say 10%. 100 kids goes up to 110. It's just noise when you account for all mortalities.

Media has been fueling fear bullshit for decades.

The fact that media deliberately scares people to get attention and therefore make money doesn't negate the fact at all that a modern Chevy Suburban has a 16-foot blind spot underneath it's stupidly large front end, which incidentally is about twice as long as the blind spot in front of a standard LTL semi truck.

Furthermore according to some quick googling, SUVs are between 21% and 29% of the fleet in the United States right now, and pickup trucks which have all the same issues are about 17%. So it's not "say 10%", it's between 38% and 46%. Which certainly lines up with what I see day to day during my time on the road.

And this:

> Given that more intelligent people breed less, the avg parent isn't as smart as the avg person. And we know how smart the average person is.

This is just gross, just all the way around. I'm not a parent and in fact am child-free, but this is offensive even to me. I really hope you're not in a career that requires empathy.

The truth hurts. Most people can't interpret a graph. C'est la vie.

If people can't interpret your graph, maybe your graph sucks. And if your truth hurts to say, maybe you're unqualified to say it.

http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_...

In 1969, 48 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (The National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011).

In 2009, 13 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011).

* In 1969, 41 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 89 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (U.S. Department of Transportation [USDOT], 1972).

* In 2009, 31 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 35 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011).

I wonder what is causing kids to live further from schools. Is it that there are fewer schools, or is it that more kids don't attend the closest school? There is a modern trend towards specialization of schools, or parents selecting one school over another, which would result longer distances. But there is also a trend towards centralization at larger schools.

Land is cheaper in suburban areas, and most decision makers are capable of driving unlike children. Schools in the US have been moving into more auto-oriented, less walkable places, and this also happens when schools get replaced due to reaching the end of their useful lives.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/school-car...

Yes, but what you are missing is that behaviour has changed! We have that level of net road deaths today, given that kids are being driven everywhere.

So you can't state from your data that it has got safer: you need the child deaths/km or deaths/hr walking.

> US child pedestrian deaths 1975: 1632. US child pedestrian deaths 2019: 138.

The graph in the article explains this. Kids just don't go outside anymore.

Maybe then the outside is just dangerous. There are lots of outdoor activities so dangerous that staying inside might be a better alternative in terms of preventable injuries (football, surfing, motorsports, anything involving horses). If the goal is to keep kids out of the ER, playing around on roads may be one of those things we should just not encourage.

I learned to chop wood and use a chainsaw as a child, partially during Boy Scouts activities. OMG that is a risky thing for a kid. Never would I suggest that be taught to kids today.

> Never would I suggest that be taught to kids today.

Why not?! Understanding how to handle dangerous situations in a safe manner is a huge learning opportunity for a young person. If you have a chainsaw at home ( and lots of us do ) young people absolutely need to have a healthy appreciation for the danger of that machine.

Only where the dangerous situation can be made safe. Rock climbing is dangerous, but with a little training and equipment becomes safer than playing soccer. A chainsaw cannot be made properly safe, not for use by children, for the same reasons we have minimum ages for driving cars.

I'd argue the other way around - supervised usage as a child (adjust age as desired) is much better than "restricted until you're on your own".

A ten-year old being taught how to handle tools could likely be safer than a 25 year old who has never seen or used one before, but just bought one.

Maybe a smaller electric chainsaw? With far less power and therefore reduced bucking/etc? 100% get what you're saying. Chainsaws are risky use items for skilled adults.

It also isn't just the chainsaw but the implications of using one. Chainsaws are not used indoors. They are used on uneven terrain to cut things (trees/logs) that are irregular in shape/weight and subject to unseen internal forces. It's a setup for random movements an unanticipated results. Even for adults, felling a tree with a chainsaw is a very dangerous thing.

Would you rather have kids learn about chainsaws while supervised in the Scouts, or learn about them on the streets due to peer pressure and possibly while high on drugs?

Saying that the total number of deaths decreased does not mean that children are safer interacting with roads. It could mean that children interact significantly less with roads in the first place. The statistic you gave is not enough to draw that conclusion.

> US child pedestrian deaths 1975: 1632. US child pedestrian deaths 2019: 138.

Not to mention that the US population in the 1970 census was 203M. In the 2020 census, 331M - a 63% increase from 1970!

So a 91% reduction in deaths while population increased 63%. I'm not a statistician but that seems pretty great.

I'm sure the children-per-capita rate changed during that time as well so maybe someone who knows that figure could do some more precise math.

But overall the "oh no my kids couldn't possible cross the street without being immediately killed!" hyperbole seems just that.

The number of children hasn't changed that much, only a few percent since 1970. The proportion of the population under 20 years old has changed from ~~~about~19%~to~about~12%~~~ (edit:) about 38% to about 24%.

>The proportion of the population under 20 years old has changed from about 19% to about 12%.

That's easily disprovable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

Sorry, you're right, that was nonsensical: I was cutting all of the percentages in half. Excuse me. (This was based on looking at a chart where sexes were split and percentages of each age/sex were given out of the total population but I confused myself into thinking it was as a proportion of that sex.)

Should have said ~38% to ~24%.

Children choosing to be inside more (games, social media, internet), parents keeping children inside more (24hr news full of horror stories), suburbs too far from anywhere so parents need to drive children everywhere they want to go, not letting them go near the roads because the roads are thought to be too dangerous, decline in availability of parks, malls, 'third places' for children to go outside the home other than school, those would also show up as reduction in deaths by road accidents and yet could be consistent with "oh no my kids couldn't possible cross the street without being immediately killed!" being true.

Because no children play outside parents helicopter them.

You don't seriously think children stand more of a chance against cars of today with their ridiculously inflated size, power and weight do you?