Your comment made me consider this point, and I think it's a good one. That said, I actually live in a less crowded and busy city than I did as a child, yet th

Your comment made me consider this point, and I think it's a good one. That said, I actually live in a less crowded and busy city than I did as a child, yet the conditioning the parent poster mentions is there. As a 6 year old, I would walk next to busy urban streets alone, cross streets, get on trams, and go to school. I don't think the risk of that has really gotten much higher, we just perceive it differently. A good example is how cars didn't have seatbelts (at the back at least), or headrests, and they had a tendency to crumple and have the steering column impale the driver during collisions. We seem to be more keenly aware of these issues nowadays, and are somehow more averse to them - quite aside from any actual changes for the worse.