As a parent, these comments are always so weird to read. Kids play outside, including unsupervised still. Kids getting hit by drivers is statistically very rare (though no less tragic)
Suggesting that “many” of the kids who “try” to play outside get killed by cars is the kind of conclusion you can only arrive at by living life through hyperbolic headlines or the dramatic evening news.
I think I have seen in the news at least 3 separate instances where parent drove over and killed their own child in their front yard while just trying to drive out. It is like over my entire lifetime so I may made up and it was 2 or once - but I cannot forget it as I imagine such tragedy even writing about while never been nowhere close to such an event it makes me feel uneasy in my chest and stomach.
I think you're just out of touch with reality. Maybe the fact you're a parent has tainted your view - some type of bias against admitting things might suck.
When I was a kid, the amount of kids outside was easily orders of magnitude more. Things I did as a kid are pretty much unthinkable now. I mean, as young as 7 I was riding my bike miles away.
It's not that things are worse now, it's that enough kids died that newer parents are much more cautious.
Note how visible all of those primary school children would be to anyone using one of those cars in the car park. Now imagine the same scene today with the car park full of modern cars (and 'trucks') where the bottom of any of the vehicle's windows would be well above many of those children's heads.
I think it is implied that they are not allowed to by their parents and thus not killed?
There is no way 1.5 to 4yo can play unsupervised, as in grabbing distance from adults, in areas close to traffic? Maybe 4yo can do with yelling distance from adults.
Like, if people wouldn't care so much as they do, I would guess there would be a lot of fatalities.
Once upon a time crossing the street meant walking across a 20 foot road with the occasional small car going 20-25 mph. Now it's a 4-8 lane stroad full of 6,000 pound trucks that can't see anyone shorter than 5 feet past the hood going 50 mph.
How far will you let your kid walk from home alone?
Anyway my point is just that pedestrian deaths have gone up even as the number of miles walked and biked (_especially_ by kids - the modeshare for biking to school has absolutely plummetted) goes down.
Texas checking in here - yes, it's Texas, and no, it's not hyperbole.
Don't know what rinky dink town you're from, but here most roads are 6-8 lanes across. Yes, that includes in our small cities. They're essentially highways but with signal lights. Go to Arlington, Grand Prairie, Richardson, Fort Worth, Roanoke, Southlake, you name it, and it's just roads after roads like this. Trying to cross them is extremely dangerous.
I'm from rural Texas and it is indeed rinky dink town, not to far from the places you mention. But I moved to New England years ago and don't miss Texas at all. Keller, Southlake, even, sadly, Denton were overdeveloped hell holes then, but I never lived anywhere where kids were playing right beside an eight lane road. At worse maybe they had to cross a 4 lane road with a median if they were going somewhere outside their neighborhood, and you had lights and crosswalks for this, but mostly people lived in neighborhoods where there were... normal... roads.
They're over-developed and simultaneously run down. If you've ever driven down southlake boulevard you know it gets PACKED during rush hour.
> I never lived anywhere where kids were playing right beside an eight lane road
You leave my neighborhood and immediately it's a 50 MPH 6 lane stroad. Granted, I'm counting 3 one way, 3 the other, occasional turning lanes makes it 7 or 8.
It's true your neighborhood is fine. But there's literally nothing in your neighborhood but homes. If you need anything, no matter how trivial, you have to cross stroads. This is very much in contrast to urban mixed-use pedestrian friendly areas.
Another Texas resident, confirming yes this is largely the experience for a lot of Texas. But its not just Texas; I've seen the same in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and other places. Practically every neighborhood development since the 1980s is probably like this.
You'll have smaller streets inside of neighborhoods which are islands of nothing but houses, then massive busy streets in between. Sidewalks directly abutting these very busy streets, if even there. Usually no bike lanes.
Every single residential street in America is full of cars parked or moving at 25+ mph. It's a miserable experience for anyone outside of a car and dangerous for smaller children who don't pay attention and can run into traffic.
Even the largely carless (read: not many cars parked on the street) ones like my neighborhood that had a whole bunch of kids happily playing outside and in the street this weekend without issue? Every single one?
The street directly in front of my house is largely like that. I don't even feel very safe doing the edging standing in the street, people turn down the street off the 40MPH (probably going 45-50MPH) main road next to it and blindly start heading down the residential street at 25-30mph.
The cul-de-sac behind my house through the alley is a good bit calmer. That's where my kids go to play.
If you want your kids to grow old and you live somewhere where cars are priority you don't have much choice but your backyard, a park or wilderness. And a backyard might not be super fun/big and parks and wilderness aren't accessible without an adult.
I remember vividly when I was a kid and we were biking on the street and someone drove too fast, dad went out in the road and yelled him down, which was reasonable.
As I said elsewhere, my neighborhood had a whole copse of kiddos, including my own, playing out and about throughout the streets this weekend.
/shrug
Edit: I don't care about upvote tallies or karma count, but it does seem pretty silly to downvote a comment for pointing out that areas like this, and play in those areas, still exist.
