Non-American detected
Please use Google Street View on the roads coming in to Mineral Bluffs, Ga, USA. No bike lines, and we're not even keen on emergency shoulder for cars and trucks!
1. Study the width of the oversize vehicle here[1].
2. Study the lack of shoulder next to this guard rail[2].
No parent in their right mind is going to be comfortable letting a six year-old walk that, in any decade. And no municipality is going to let school buses drop kids at arbitrary parts of that highway, unless the driver is dumping them into a residential side-street.
I'm glad you survived walking on streets like this when you were six, but that's not relevant to these highways being dangerous places for regular (or irregular) foot traffic.
1: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9150284,-84.2767414,3a,75y,2...
2: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.91672,-84.2760891,3a,75y,317...
Those appear to be normal streets like those kids all over the world walk on the side of?
For all of the happy survivor stories like yours (and mine), the reality is that the rate of child accidental deaths has steadily decreases over the past few decades as parents (and society) became more protective. That isn't to say I agree with over-parenting and eliminating independence -- I don't -- but there needs to be rationality applied as well as personal values.
Edit: I decided to look up the CDC statistics to see if there is any net benefit, but total childhood mortality rates have been increasing in the US. Measuring accidental deaths is extremely flawed, if that were a good target then we should keep all children indoors. No bike riding, no swimming, no tree climbing, just keep them inside on a screen all day long and accidental deaths will continue to drop.
One only need to look at how a single kid is parented vs four.
I had a hilarious example at the park where the single child had constant supervision while the fourth kid of the same age was left alone to do whatever until she hurt herself and started crying. In between she ate dirt, sand, jumped in a puddle, threw stones at the local wild life, ate the single kids snacks, and finally fell off a ladder and busted her nose.
It's not that parents in the 70s were hands off, it's that they had their hands full and couldn't do any more.
It's also decreased as the amount of environmental lead has decreased.
It's also decreased as the number of computer screens has increased.
It's also decreased as sugar consumption has increased. (Are parents actually being protective as they feed more sugar to their kids?)
As has our consumption of GMOs.
It's also decreased as government-mandated product, automobile, and housing safety standards have increased (which is different from parents becoming more protective!).
A rational response would be to hold off on highlighting any specific correlation until establishing that it's more meaningful than other alternatives.
While accidental deaths are down, I wouldn’t be so quick to conclude this is because of parents/ becoming more protective so much as society collectively implementing regulations and safety standards that target specific things that are known to be highly dangerous. The list of these targeted changes is extremely long, but some top mentions:
- Safer car and booster seats. Cribs, toys, and other household items.
- Advances in healthcare and access to vaccinations.
- Better education for caregivers around drowning prevention, safe sleeping practices, etc.
- Childproofed products like wall outlets, cabinet locks, baby gates, etc.
- Stricter rules and education on smoke and carbon monoxide detection.
- Road safety initiatives ranging from seatbelt and child restraints laws to anti-DUI programs.
- Improved consumer protections and communication of product recalls.
And the list goes on.