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Comment by lvl155 | Hacker News Reader

Counter point: I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived. I can go on and on and on. I had to learn to walk an extra 20-30 minutes to avoid these situations. I will never let my kids walk home in 2025.

Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a drive-through. In most cases, it is a choice. You can opt to park like a normal person and walk up. This article is absurd. Most of these parents are too lazy to walk 5 minutes. I’ve seen parents show up 40 minutes to be first in queue…just so they don’t have to get out of their cars. Makes zero sense.

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I'm sorry for your experience, but this is extremely location dependent.

Walking home from school in many areas is perfectly safe. In other areas it's not. Making blanket statements or restrictions without context doesn't make sense.

So you’re conceding this is location dependent. So in effect you’re saying the article is also location dependent? Pick one. If you knew the statistics on kidnapping or missing children in the US, you would not think of this as a “life-style” choice. By the way, 80% of US population live in urban areas so your experience living in 20% is not representative.

> So in effect you’re saying the article is also location dependent?

The article is literally about how location effects are driving the changes.

> Pick one. If you knew the statistics on kidnapping in the US, you would not think of this as a “life-style” choice.

Child abduction is extremely rare in the United States.

You might be confusing sensational headlines with statistics. It's common to report missing children or parental disputes as kidnapping, which people conflate with children being abducted off the street

Here's an article about it with some real statistics from the FBI: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-dat...

For some perspective: The number of children abducted by strangers in the United States every year is similar to the number of children who die from head injuries from riding a bike: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8909479/

More people in the United States die from lightning strikes every year.

There aren’t many places in the US where it is safe AND practical for kids to walk home. If you don’t understand this, then you basically live in a bubble.

> There aren’t many places in the US where it is safe AND practical for kids to walk home.

Discussing the practicality aspect is literally the point of the article.

Above I was addressing your arguments about danger and kidnappers.

this is simply not true. I personally am in 12th town I’ve lived in the last 25 years, every single place I lived was walkable to school. it might just be you that lives in a bubble :)

You seem to be missing the point. In the vast majority of cases locations being unsuitable for walking/cycling to school isn't an immutable law of nature - it's a result of deliberate choices made by humans.

Building primarily low-density car-dependent suburbs is a choice. Building horribly oversized car infrastructure is a choice. Not building bike or pedestrian infrastructure is a choice. Building one megaschool instead of a handful of smaller local schools is a choice.

People voted to have slightly lower taxes and spend a few hours a week waiting in the pickup line. That's a lifestyle choice, even if they weren't aware they were making it.

The statics on kidnapped or missing children in the US say most are taken by a family member, not by a stranger in public. I rode my bike to school in fifth grade but had to stop because of my mom's anxiety.

I live in a US suburb where a good chunk of elementary school and upwards walk home. This suburb is >60 years old. It's all about planning.

If I lived in the kind of third world hellhole where this was a realistic scenario, I'd leave the country.

You don't even need to leave the country, as these locations are very specific parts of cities in the country.

It’s the US. People on here are so sheltered.

The vast majority of the US is not like this. Yes, there are some (generally poor, urban) areas with crime problems. The average middle class town or suburb? Walking to school would be safe, if we simply built sidewalks instead of 6 lane highways.

The majority of the US is absolutely not like this.

You keep accusing other people of living in a bubble, but you're indexing your entire experience on to anecdotes of where you grew up as an individual experience.

I lived all over this country. Inner cities to rural areas. North to South. East to West. Do you even have kids? And why are you targeting me on here?

In all honesty, statistically, that person's assertions are highly likely not to be fact.

It's like the man who has happened on "several" three-alarm fires in his life. How many times does a person happen on even one three-alarm fire in a lifetime? Let alone "several". The likelihood you're either speaking to an arsonist or a liar is very high.

Same is true for people who are robbed at gunpoint "several" times. The statistical likelihood that you're either speaking to a criminal or a liar is extremely high.

Hmm. I don't know the race of the poster you are referring to. I do know from friends who were not White, their experience living in the South was vastly different from mine.

I got that it's the US. My statement stands.

Probably just a city, not the whole country.

You are raising your kids in a neighborhood that is prone to this level of violence?

Kids go missing roughly every minute in this country. I am not risking anything to feel good about implied negligence.

About 95% of children reported missing to the FBI were found to have run away.

Child abduction by strangers is extremely rare: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-dat...

You keep referring that article but you can feel free to look up official stats.

The article cites the FBI, DOJ, and NCMEC.

When I was young, my family was on food stamps when my parents were laid off. It took them some time to find work. For some people, they have no choice where they live.

My parents used to live in a city where violence and crime was common, and I received all sorts of lessons from them about how I shouldn’t go outside, don’t talk to strangers, always be guarded, etc. But my family had moved to a quiet, crime-free suburb and everything they told me seemed like the complete opposite of what I was experiencing in reality when growing up.

>I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived.

Where was this? Most places in the US are not this susceptible to random violence. In the suburban city I grew up in, I'd walk home from school and I never saw a firearm in public when I was a kid, aside from those carried by police.

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