5 ms·

I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit frie

by cel1ne 10y ago

I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.

solipsism 10y ago
Never has a thread been more full of survivorship bias. If you had juggled chainsaws as a kid and survived it wouldn't be any more relevant.
- E6300 10y ago
  So what you're saying is that most adults never crossed any major roads as children and most children that have crossed major roads didn't grow up to be adults? I know traffic statistics are depressing, but surely they can't be that bad.
- dtech 10y ago
  You're making it sounds like there's a pile of dead kids just growing on the side of the road every day. Lethal traffic incidents among children are non-trivial, but no-where near enough to introduce any kind of "survivorship bias" effect.
  - solipsism 10y ago
    The point is that "I did X and I survived!" does not advance the conversation, regardless of which side is right.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- DonaldFrump 10y ago
  Indeed. Among the many reasons life-expectancy was worse back then, children were less likely to survive to adulthood. Among "Great Grandpa's" 13 siblings growing up on the farm, the one who drowned unsupervised at the ol' swimmin' hole six miles from home is just another statistic next to the couple who died as infants from disease. Everyone's grandparents who survived just fine are exactly that: just fine, because they survived. Nowadays, with parents having fewer children on average and with tragic childhood accidents being more exceptional, I would only expect modern parenting to favor greater restrictions.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
If you're imagining a single kid, it sounds reasonable. Now think about the millions of kids across the country: what are the odds that in a year, none of them will make a fatal mistake while crossing a street? Even adults screw up, we can't reasonably expect kids not to when the consequences can be fatal. We could easily make our streets safer and more tolerant of user error if we actually cared, look at Sweden or the Netherlands. We just have to make safety a higher priority than speed in road design. Think about how insane it is that we're expecting kids to regularly navigate an environment where, if they make even a small mistake, they can die. In what universe is that reasonable? Why are expecting our children to regularly dodge death?
- cel1ne 10y ago
  We were 5 children. I posted some statistics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214
- vacri 10y ago
  > Now think about the millions of kids across the country: what are the odds that in a year, none of them will make a fatal mistake while crossing a street? What price a life? What else would you block to save a life? Pen lids? Swimming pools? Marshmallows? > if they make even a small mistake, they can die. In what universe is that reasonable? This universe. It is nature's way. Nature is unemotionally brutal, and cares not for a slip-up. We just try to insulate ourselves from its brutality. Edit to reply to Tullius (I've hit my comment limit): The whole origin of this discussion is the hit to quality of life that losing the 'right to roam' has given. Also, while pen lids and marshmallows are outliers, swimming pool deaths aren't - between 1 and 4yo, drowning is the leading cause of death in the US, and drowning is up there with traffic accidents up until the teen years.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    > What price a life? What else would you block to save a life? Pen lids? Swimming pools? Marshmallows? Obviously there's some limit to the degree we can protect ourselves, however as it stands, traffic fatalities are one of the highest-ranked causes of death for kids and youth, and we know of plenty of things that could increase traffic safety while still satisfying our transportation needs. There's no need to debate some silly extreme when we can make vast improvements without compromising quality of life. > This universe. It is nature's way. Nature is unemotionally brutal, and cares not for a slip-up. We just try to insulate ourselves from its brutality. Yes, and we could insulate ourselves a lot better if we took up better traffic engineering principles.
facepalm 10y ago
Traffic is already the biggest killer of kids (afaik). You can only teach kids so much. They are kids - sometimes impulsive...
- cel1ne 10y ago
  I agree. And it's different if a child is 4 or 9 years old. I posted some statistics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214
cel1ne 10y ago
For those interested: I live in Austria, the year of my story was about 1992. These are the statistics about traffic-accidents back then. Unfortunately there's no distinction whether the children were in the car or walking/cycling. * Austria had 7.8 million inhabitants back then, 24% were 0-19 years old. * There were 4.682 accidents involving children 0-14 years old * 4.843 times a child was hurt * 56 children were killed Source: http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/energie_umwelt_innovation_mobilitaet/verkehr/strasse/unfaelle_mit_personenschaden/069552.html http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/energie_umwelt_in...
fpig 10y ago
It is possible. In fact, we have proof suggesting it's possible (me and millions like me who grew up that way and lived) while we have no proof suggesting otherwise. It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside, so people decided it was a bad idea. People just became obsessed with their children's safety and stopped letting them outside just in case. At no point was there some large-scale problem of children dying due to being allowed to roam. The only large-scale problem was the anxiety suffered by parents who started obsessively worrying about their child, and maintaining tighter control over children is mainly medicine to alleviate their anxiety.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside Do you know what the rates of accidental death were in the 1970s vs today? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just interested if you know the data. EDIT: indeed, most children killed in car accidents were inside the vehicles, so driving kids everywhere may be increasing their risk of death. And a decreasing death rate might just be better car safety features - better car seats; better seatbelts and seatbelt laws. EDIT2: Something like 12,000 US children die each year from unintentional injury, and 29million have non fatal injuries. Most of these are preventable.
  - fpig 10y ago
    I have no real stats, but I can tell you that from the hundreds of kids at my school zero died from getting hit by a car. There was exactly 1 accident-related death and it was while playing sports, and this was a much older kid (like 12-13). Now that's not a very good sample size for a low-probability event, but it's not entirely insignificant either. If children had to dodge death at every turn like one commenter suggested, zero out of several hundred would have been unlikely. As for non-fatal injuries, that's different, we were CONSTANTLY injured. Not from cars, but from just being clumsy stupid little fucks. It was normal for a kid to have bloody knees or scabs on their knees in my childhood. But I don't consider that a problem.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    yeah, preventable. strap kid to the bed or lock in the cellar and no car will ever harm it, right. there will never be 100% safety, kids do stupid dangerous things, climb stuff that shouldn't be climbed, we all did. in past, people accepted that, accepted the risk of injury and death for their kids, it was part of growing up. we just grew weaker recently, became control freaks, with illusion that we can control everything, while losing so much more. freedom. fck, i am so glad i grew up in exactly that period of experiencing many good old things, and be able to apreciate new cool stuff too.

by cel1ne 10y ago

solipsism 10y ago

Never has a thread been more full of survivorship bias. If you had juggled chainsaws as a kid and survived it wouldn't be any more relevant.

E6300 10y ago
So what you're saying is that most adults never crossed any major roads as children and most children that have crossed major roads didn't grow up to be adults? I know traffic statistics are depressing, but surely they can't be that bad.
dtech 10y ago
You're making it sounds like there's a pile of dead kids just growing on the side of the road every day. Lethal traffic incidents among children are non-trivial, but no-where near enough to introduce any kind of "survivorship bias" effect.
- solipsism 10y ago
  The point is that "I did X and I survived!" does not advance the conversation, regardless of which side is right.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
DonaldFrump 10y ago
Indeed. Among the many reasons life-expectancy was worse back then, children were less likely to survive to adulthood. Among "Great Grandpa's" 13 siblings growing up on the farm, the one who drowned unsupervised at the ol' swimmin' hole six miles from home is just another statistic next to the couple who died as infants from disease. Everyone's grandparents who survived just fine are exactly that: just fine, because they survived. Nowadays, with parents having fewer children on average and with tragic childhood accidents being more exceptional, I would only expect modern parenting to favor greater restrictions.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

If you're imagining a single kid, it sounds reasonable. Now think about the millions of kids across the country: what are the odds that in a year, none of them will make a fatal mistake while crossing a street? Even adults screw up, we can't reasonably expect kids not to when the consequences can be fatal. We could easily make our streets safer and more tolerant of user error if we actually cared, look at Sweden or the Netherlands. We just have to make safety a higher priority than speed in road design. Think about how insane it is that we're expecting kids to regularly navigate an environment where, if they make even a small mistake, they can die. In what universe is that reasonable? Why are expecting our children to regularly dodge death?

cel1ne 10y ago
We were 5 children. I posted some statistics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214
vacri 10y ago
> Now think about the millions of kids across the country: what are the odds that in a year, none of them will make a fatal mistake while crossing a street? What price a life? What else would you block to save a life? Pen lids? Swimming pools? Marshmallows? > if they make even a small mistake, they can die. In what universe is that reasonable? This universe. It is nature's way. Nature is unemotionally brutal, and cares not for a slip-up. We just try to insulate ourselves from its brutality. Edit to reply to Tullius (I've hit my comment limit): The whole origin of this discussion is the hit to quality of life that losing the 'right to roam' has given. Also, while pen lids and marshmallows are outliers, swimming pool deaths aren't - between 1 and 4yo, drowning is the leading cause of death in the US, and drowning is up there with traffic accidents up until the teen years.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  > What price a life? What else would you block to save a life? Pen lids? Swimming pools? Marshmallows? Obviously there's some limit to the degree we can protect ourselves, however as it stands, traffic fatalities are one of the highest-ranked causes of death for kids and youth, and we know of plenty of things that could increase traffic safety while still satisfying our transportation needs. There's no need to debate some silly extreme when we can make vast improvements without compromising quality of life. > This universe. It is nature's way. Nature is unemotionally brutal, and cares not for a slip-up. We just try to insulate ourselves from its brutality. Yes, and we could insulate ourselves a lot better if we took up better traffic engineering principles.

facepalm 10y ago

Traffic is already the biggest killer of kids (afaik). You can only teach kids so much. They are kids - sometimes impulsive...

cel1ne 10y ago
I agree. And it's different if a child is 4 or 9 years old. I posted some statistics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549214

cel1ne 10y ago

For those interested: I live in Austria, the year of my story was about 1992. These are the statistics about traffic-accidents back then. Unfortunately there's no distinction whether the children were in the car or walking/cycling. * Austria had 7.8 million inhabitants back then, 24% were 0-19 years old. * There were 4.682 accidents involving children 0-14 years old * 4.843 times a child was hurt * 56 children were killed Source: http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/energie_umwelt_innovation_mobilitaet/verkehr/strasse/unfaelle_mit_personenschaden/069552.html http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/energie_umwelt_in...

fpig 10y ago

It is possible. In fact, we have proof suggesting it's possible (me and millions like me who grew up that way and lived) while we have no proof suggesting otherwise. It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside, so people decided it was a bad idea. People just became obsessed with their children's safety and stopped letting them outside just in case. At no point was there some large-scale problem of children dying due to being allowed to roam. The only large-scale problem was the anxiety suffered by parents who started obsessively worrying about their child, and maintaining tighter control over children is mainly medicine to alleviate their anxiety.

DanBC 10y ago
> It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside Do you know what the rates of accidental death were in the 1970s vs today? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just interested if you know the data. EDIT: indeed, most children killed in car accidents were inside the vehicles, so driving kids everywhere may be increasing their risk of death. And a decreasing death rate might just be better car safety features - better car seats; better seatbelts and seatbelt laws. EDIT2: Something like 12,000 US children die each year from unintentional injury, and 29million have non fatal injuries. Most of these are preventable.
- fpig 10y ago
  I have no real stats, but I can tell you that from the hundreds of kids at my school zero died from getting hit by a car. There was exactly 1 accident-related death and it was while playing sports, and this was a much older kid (like 12-13). Now that's not a very good sample size for a low-probability event, but it's not entirely insignificant either. If children had to dodge death at every turn like one commenter suggested, zero out of several hundred would have been unlikely. As for non-fatal injuries, that's different, we were CONSTANTLY injured. Not from cars, but from just being clumsy stupid little fucks. It was normal for a kid to have bloody knees or scabs on their knees in my childhood. But I don't consider that a problem.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  yeah, preventable. strap kid to the bed or lock in the cellar and no car will ever harm it, right. there will never be 100% safety, kids do stupid dangerous things, climb stuff that shouldn't be climbed, we all did. in past, people accepted that, accepted the risk of injury and death for their kids, it was part of growing up. we just grew weaker recently, became control freaks, with illusion that we can control everything, while losing so much more. freedom. fck, i am so glad i grew up in exactly that period of experiencing many good old things, and be able to apreciate new cool stuff too.