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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards.

Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked)

Or here's a more polished, edited video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TuGAHR78w

We literally covered the world in asphalt ribbons of death and then we wonder why kids don't play outside.

What's crazy is how many kids are killed by drivers even _after_ kids stopped playing outside. It's like if the number of swimmers fell by 90% and drownings went _up_.

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> For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently

Or come to where I live in the midwestern united states and you see the same thing. I see kids as young as 7 years old riding bikes together on a bike path that has a very generous distance to the nearby road, and parents let them roam free.

Always remember: If you see a statistic about the US and think "wow, that sucks, the US must suck", remember, it's a very, very, very big country. The corollary to this is that if you see some small country with a really nice looking statistic, remember that the US probably has many, many, many places within it that also just as nice and share a similar statistic. If we were to lump the NL with all of Europe, I'm sure we could find some ugly looking statistics, and you would probably resent the idea of NL being lumped in with it.

Regression to the mean is a real phenomenon and I wish more people would understand it.

If you live anywhere like Houten[1] anywhere in the US, please tell me ASAP because I'll move there tomorrow.

From my area of the Midwest around Iowa City, there are decent paths that connect the local towns, but intra-town cycling is far less supported. We have bike lanes (good), on some streets (bad), they're unprotected (bad) and they close on Sunday (bad, also what?). The car-free bike path along the river is shared with pedestrians, and some spandex-festooned idiots don't understand that it's not the place to go fast.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFEfr7Amn6U (5 minute overview of Houten)

I didn't say I live in a place just like Houten, I said I live in a place where you regularly see kids under 10 years old riding bikes together without adults (and like GP said, often with a fishing pole or soccer ball in tow.)

You don't need a place that's the literal "best place for cycling in the world" for this, you just need to (1) build a bike path that's not adjacent to the road (ours is typically 10-20ft away from the road) and (2) have it be along a main thoroughfare where everyone lives a short distance from it.

Where is this? It sounds nice.

I see that in poor areas of the midwest. You need enough single working moms with no time to supervise their kids that it saturates the area with enough independent kids that a Karen can't damn all of them no matter how fast they call CPS. The other kids get jealous too so the whole dynamic changes.

If it's a rich area with stay at home moms (#1 Karens) or enough retired boomers sitting around with nothing to do but enjoy the power of calling modern CPS, forget it.

I lived in the US for thirty years. I’m American. I would be ECSTATIC if the US had one place like this. Best I can think of are maybe accidentally low car areas like Catalina island.

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

(Not where I live, but it's in my state.)

Ah, good example. It would be nice to see more places built like this intentionally rather than accidentally.

houten is infamous in some circles as the antithesis of american living :))

That sounds majestic

It really is. I’m very lucky to live here.

I recently had a trip to NL and was very surprised to see jobs for children being advertised there!

Hah, was it Dirk by any chance? (Give your username)

There's a lot of kids stocking shelves in the stores here. It's a great way for them to be responsible and earn a few extra euro. I think it's great that the Dutch don't treat their 15 and 16 year olds like babies, like American parents do.

I just wish this were available to more families.

I was quite surprised to see grocery stores with my name on it :)

It's common in the UK to work from the age of 13 or 14, depending where you live. I worked in the Post Office across my road at 13, every Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon, in 2009. Most of my friends had part time jobs working in retail while at school. I was behind the pub bar at 16 slinging pints.

The (possibly completely incorrect) impression I get from speaking with Americans I know who have moved here, or I work with, is that nobody really works until they get to college unless it's a paper round or it's at your parents business. It almost goes without saying then that most people would be pretty infantile if they don't start work until they're almost mid-20s.

I think part of that in Britain is because we live in towns. In a small town there's always a shop or pub or restaurant to work in and kids can walk or cycle to work. Same in NL. Because so much of America lives in pure residential suburbs, the opportunities aren't there.

I am in Sydney, Australia.

It was a nice surprise to see teenagers working in my local brewery this past weekend, collecting glasses, clearing and cleaning tables, etc. They were probably between 13 and 16. Not allowed to serve alcohol until they are 18, and can take on the personal legal responsibilities for Responsible Service of Alcohol.

Most jobs for teenagers here are in fast food service - two of my friends have mid/late teenagers working these jobs. Most jobs in retail, at least near me, seem to be taken by adults.

That’s because fast food places have a special deal with the government and can legally pay below minimum wage to youngsters.

Yeah, I think I started working in Restaurants aged 14 and really didn't stop. I still get a slight burst of nostalgia whenever I go to the countryside and see the pubs etc staffed by young'uns(it doesn't seem to happen much in London, don't know about other cities).

In your analogy, swimmers may have gone down 90% but kids are still being submerged in water as much as ever if not more. The vast majority of traffic deaths are people INSIDE cars.

Pedestrian deaths in the US are up 78% since 2009. [0]

[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-so-many-pedes...

The increase is mostly attributable to 30-39 year olds on arterial highways at night.

Kids playing on neighborhood streets show continued improvement... In fact IIHS pedestrian fatality data says that 1-13 year olds are the group with the HIGHEST reduction

This exchange shows why I don’t trust most people who initially through statistics out on the internet. It takes a real autist to come in with the correct reading of it.

That data shows a local minimum in 2009 and suggests that pedestrian deaths were higher during the "golden age" the commenter is referring to than today, and that is in spite of many more cars on the road today

Another gem from your own source that refutes this entire line of reasoning:

"Deaths of children under 10 are actually down significantly (167 deaths in 2009 to 98 deaths in 2023), and deaths for ages 10-19 are down as well."

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