You can't talk about this without talking about car culture. In many cases, there's simply nowhere for kids to actually go on their own without being driven the

You can't talk about this without talking about car culture. In many cases, there's simply nowhere for kids to actually go on their own without being driven there. This also leads to streets being designed 100% for car convenience to the point of making them unusuable, dangerous and/or hugely inconvenient to anyone else. Another issue is the compltely overblown fear or crimes such as abduction. The #1 and #2 causes of child death in the US are firearms related and automobile related (respectively). Those are completely normalized.