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Comment by slifin | Hacker News Reader

Cars, I nearly got run over as a kid a few times

Now as an adult I'd be worried about cycling around with cars that would hit me in the chest and not the legs on impact

Also cars make it very easy for a stranger to pull up and kidnap, parents subconsciously know that and factor it into their decisions

There was also youth clubs where I grew up and a BMX track and no phones so play was mostly happening outside

Society is going to continue to degrading as long as debts keep increasing

Debts will keep increasing because the only way to create new money is everytime someone gets a loan the bank injects the principle into the economy but then expects interest on top so there will never be enough money in the economy for everyone to pay off all their debts

We'll either get mass debt forgiveness or societal collapse and so far we've opted for societal collapse

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Ok I actually agree with you about debt and the general societal degradation, but kidnapping is a non-issue.

In modern times there's a total of about 70 child kidnappings per year in the US. I am excluding parental kidnappings which sends that up by orders of magnitude, but I think that's fair because that's an entirely different issue and you specifically said stranger anyhow (though even of those 70 - a sizable chunk are not strangers). For contrast about 400 people are struck by lightning each year.

Statistically, it just doesn't happen. It's just one of those things, like terrorism or mass shootings, that is so unbelievably terrifying that people overreact in a self destructive way to try to prevent something that is statistically much less of a threat than just normal behaviors we take for granted.

I don't think money is the key issue. There were no clubs or nice tracks when I grew up, but ditches, canals, and forested areas worked just as well.

What is included in the stats for kidnapping? Where I live a confused young man convinced a little girl to get on his ebike and forced her to ride along with him for a few hours before coming back to the neighbourhood and being stopped by police that was out in full force for him.

My point being, “only 70 a year in the US” sounds like a very low number and inconsequential number since we had an abduction close by already.

Any parent that has heard the same story is thinking of that instead of the stats.

It is true that people have wildly incorrect understanding of crime rates and that this causes them to make strange decisions both in their personal lives and in the policies they support.

Child abductions are amazingly rare. Data for them is strong because they are consistently reported.

When people try to downplay rates by comparing to another very rare event, I respond by saying “I don’t want to go outside during a thunderstorm” rather than “you don’t need to risk it cus it’s so rare”.

Most Americans are feeling the same way and you must understand this to understand why Cheeto in chief keeps winning.

Cars and building for car infrastructure is part of it. Another part, I think, is the decline in neighborhood communities. By that I mean the social pressure to get to know/socialize with your neighbors, through everything from block parties to shared church membership. When kids go “wandering the neighborhood” they were never far from one of the member’s houses, or at least a familiar neighbor who would notice them and keep an eye out.

Which also goes back to car infrastructure. If you need to drive everywhere for any and all errands/activities, you won’t interact with people in nearby houses, you wont see neighbors at the local bar or small grocery store.

So many of the issues in the US stem from an isolating car (instead of people) oriented infrastructure. Everything from social breakdown, obesity, aggressive brodozers, insane utility and insurance expenses - the list goes on.

That is a fast track from cars to societal collapse. But agree cars are terrifying. I live in what should be a walking friendly part of Boston that is very pedestrian unfriendly because drivers are overly aggressive, on their phones, or commuting through to avoid traffic and do not care. It is the only reason our 10 year old is not yet wandering around on his own. I have spent years writing local politicians about improved intersections and traffic enforcement and have given up. No one seems to care. The car is king in the US. Even in a corner of the country where there is a lot of room to design around them not for them.

cars were just as plentiful in the 70s and 80s as now and yet parents weren't nearly as worried about it as they are now

and kids were much more on bikes then than now -- which is a rare sight unless it's parents with their little kids on a Sunday ride in the park

It's not just how many cars there are, but how big they are, how aggressively they're driven, and how much infrastructure there is for bikes alongside.

Based on the census, cars were NOT just as plentiful. The number of cars per household has risen slightly[1] (although they stop keeping track after 3 cars), but the number of households have doubled[2] between 1970 and 2020.

As for the bikes, it's a vicious cycle compounded by distracted driving via cell phone. Less bikes means less drivers expecting to see a bike, making it more dangerous for bikes, meaning less bikes.

1: https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_20... 2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TTLHH

sure, population has grown, but unless density has increased substantially, then on any given ride you're likely to encounter similar number of vehicles than before, not counting major / commute roads of course, but those aren't the ones kids are riding on

also, bike lanes were virtually non-existent back then

Fantastic news, population density has increased substantially![1] 57.5 average people/square mile in 1970, growing to 93.8 in 2020.

1: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/density-d...

The size of the United States has not increased since 1970, but the number of people has. So yes, no shit, (US pop / US land area) has gone up. But the question is, "is the average neighborhood more dense than it was in 1970", and that's not a question you can answer from that number, because obviously cities & towns have spread since then.

If you want an intellectually honest comparison, take a look at the District of Columbia, which is basically 100% city and has been for many decades. It's gone down since 1970.

No one asked that question except for you.

The other commenter and I were talking about cars.

Car ownership rates increased slightly, number of households nearly doubled, and average population density went up in every state except DC. There are more cars. Cars do not stay in one place, especially in the case of suburbanization.

Also, I'm not sure why/how the DC piece is intellectually honest. The Washington Metropolitan Statistical area has more than doubled in population since 1970[1]. Do you think all of the people who moved to PG County stay out of DC? That must be why the beltway is so easy to maneuver!

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_metropolitan_area

> unless density has increased substantially, then on any given ride you're likely to encounter similar number of vehicles than before, not counting major / commute roads of course, but those aren't the ones kids are riding on

This was the original mention of density. Sure, cars don't stay in one place, but if we're talking about kids walking/biking around their suburban neighborhood, how big is the impact if there's a new 50k suburb on the other side of the urban core? Even commuters from the exurbs are taking the dastardly 45mph stroads, not the stopsign-laden 25mph streets through your neighborhood.

The common parlance around here is that "greater density" means smaller houses closer together or multi-unit structures. If you build a new subdivision outside town, nobody says "oh wow the town got so much denser", it just got broader. Waving at "57.5 average people/square mile in 1970, growing to 93.8 in 2020" says absolutely nothing about the experience of the average person on the average streets near their homes.

All right:

As an average person, I've observed that both my childhood and current neighborhoods (Mid-Atlantic and Midwest respectively) have increased in the number of cars present, and that's within and between neighborhoods. I have also observed more in-fill subdivisions between neighborhoods. Since the '90s, I've seen just the bike ride that I'd take multiple times a week in my Mid-Atlantic suburb yield one acre lots turned into 8 homes, a small office park being converted into multiple 5-over-1s, a country club being turned into 400 homes. In the past decade in the Midwest, I've seen 2 single family homes torn down to make 8 units with an 8 car garage and 8 more spaces out back, multiple small businesses torn down to make way for "luxury" student housing with a parking spot for every bed room, a shopping center and apartment complex torn down and turned into an even bigger apartment complex with parking for every bedroom. Many of these are on my block or on the bike path around town.

There are more cars. There is more density.

So there you go, I've provided census data, I've provided observations from my own life across multiple geographies that backs up the data.

If you're claiming that there aren't more cars in neighborhoods, please back up that claim.

That's not the density I was referring to. That doesn't measure city/suburb density. We have many more suburbs (therefore more density overall) but the number of houses within a suburb (where a child might be riding around) is not likely to have increased.

I think we have a disagreement in terms beyond "density". I'm talking about bicycle as transportation, and I believe you may be talking about bicycle as recreation.

To clarify, transportation is a means to get you to a destination. I don't know where you live, but I haven't lived in or ever even seen a suburb that provides all the destinations that a child (assuming they're old enough to ride a bike alone) would want to bike to.

Friends live in different neighborhoods. The mall certainly wasn't in my neighborhood. The video store, my church, the woods, the local pool, the public library, all required crossing streets which have become busier and busier.

The track that the US political economy is on with the feedback loop caused by government backed fixed term fixed interest loans requires an ever increasing LTV, meaning newer entrants in the housing market will have to accept increasingly precarious positions.

The 30 year fixed mortgage is an insanely good deal, and I say this as a guy who has one. The monthly cost can only stay the same (and decline due to inflation) or decline if interest rates fall and you refinance or adjust the loan. If interest rates go up, you're completely protected.

A mortgage may be more than rent for a similar place now, but I suspect it won't be that many years before the lines cross.

Yeah I'm shocked how this article can get away without a mention of cars...

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