7 ms·

How are children in car-centric societies supposed to be independent when they need adults to drive them to places?

by adrianN 3y ago

Apocryphon 3y ago
They could bike, but how many neighborhoods are safely bikeable?
- b112 3y ago
  Every one I've ever seen. Most places I've seen, yes in the US, have bike paths, and houses are typically in a separate area from main thoroughfares. Why wouldn't a kid bike to a friend's house, or a local park?
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Not all bike paths exist in quiet suburbs. Some exist along busy main roads, which make them dangerous even for adult riders.
    - asveikau 3y ago
      I suspect this depends on a North American centric definition of "busy main road" and "bike path".
    - b112 3y ago
      That's not really a bike path, now is it? It's a painted lane on a road. I've never been in a place where I had to take a "busy main road" to get around locally. Cross it sometimes, sure, which can be done at a light. This sort of highlights the problem. Over-protectiveness, by examining the worst that can happen, and the worst scenario.
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        Well, frankly, perhaps you haven't been to that many places.
      - caconym_ 3y ago
        I've been riding in a big west coast city for the better part of two decades, and I have definitely not been able to rely on dedicated bike paths (or even multimodal "trails") to get around. I mostly ride in the road, and often in the car lane rather than a paint-separated bike lane when I judge that the latter is unsafe (can happen for various reasons but mostly conflicts with cars turning right, pulling out, etc.). Despite that, I've avoided bad accidents and generally felt pretty safe, but only because I survived long enough to develop an acute intuition for when drivers are about to do something stupid/illegal/dangerous. Previous and contemporaneous experience driving a car on the same streets was also very important. I would not trust these streets with my daughter's safety on a bike, and I honestly won't trust her to read the idiots' minds until she has some experience doing so from inside a heavy steel cage. Riding within neighborhoods like the one I live in now is a different question, though some people do drive quite fast through here, and the size of the typical modern car makes clearances and sight-lines rather tight. I do see a lot of older kids out on their own walking, often to and from school, which I think is great.
        b112 3y ago
        I've been riding in a big west coast city for the better part of two decades, and I have definitely not been able to rely on dedicated bike paths (or even multimodal "trails") to get around. Fair enough, but that's not what I said. I said locally, and neighbourhood. You elude to this later in your comment, but it seems unjust to reply, and refue my comment, while changing scope. These are kids. They can bike locally to friends houses, or a corner store, or a non-central local strip mall, without hitting main roads. Which you in fact agree with, later in your comment! It doesn't need to be all or nothing, people. Biking in local neighbourhoods can be safe, and it can still be dicey on the main roads.
        caconym_ 3y ago
        > I said locally, and neighbourhood. I think the problem with your model is that it conflates these two concepts, which may sometimes be appropriate but definitely isn't universal. For example, if you walk about 3/4 of a block east from my house you will hit a relatively busy arterial that is honestly one of the more dangerous roads I've ever ridden on, with broken sight lines due to parked cars (which also constitute a dooring hazard), lots of cars pulling in and out from side streets and parking spots, delivery drivers blocking the bike lane, a busy pedestrian crossing (again with very poor visibility), and cracked and rutted pavement. Just from their small stature alone, a child riding on this road would be in significantly more danger than an adult would, to say nothing of the skill and experience it takes to navigate so many simultaneous conflicts safely. On the other hand, if you walk west from my house, you can go the better part of a mile through a quiet, shady neighborhood before hitting a main road. Now what is "local" and what is "neighborhood"? Is the grocery store about a 3 minute walk east of my house not "local" just because to get there you have to at least cross this busy, relatively dangerous arterial? I don't think that makes sense. However, it's definitely not part of my neighborhood in the go ride around the neighborhood sense I understood as a child growing up in the suburbs. So in my view I am not changing the scope of the conversation, but rather trying to draw your attention to a distinction that may not exist in the locales you have experience with, but is important in some of those you don't.
  - Geezus_42 3y ago
    Never seen a bike path in any neighborhood in the part of the US I live in. I'm sure they exist somewhere, but they are definitely not common. The are bike paths in downtown areas, but not in the suburbs.
  - winrid 3y ago
    I live in a decently nice neighborhood in San Jose. Houses $2-3m. People constantly run the stop signs, they don't slow down at all, 30-40mph. I've only lived here one month and I already saw a car hit a pedestrian on a scooter at an intersection (and the guy just drove off). The issue is just don't care, it seems. :(
  - D13Fd 3y ago
    My street is fine. But it’s a quarter mile long, and the road it connects to is nearly impassable for pedestrians or bikes. The road is narrow, curvy with steep 5-20 ft high wooded or fenced hills on either side. It has no shoulder. It’s technically a 35mph road, but cars can come around the bend at 35-50 mph at any time and you have nowhere to go. You just have to trust that they will see you and not hit you.
  - rsaxvc 3y ago
    There's a bike path in my suburb, at least a mile from my house, requiring crossing two thoroughfares to reach it. Since moving here I've effectively stopped riding because of the drivers.
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
    Statistically speaking, roads are quickly becoming more and more unsafe for drivers, let alone pedestrians and bikers. Cars are much larger than they were in 90s, people are driving more recklessly than ever and enforcement of traffic laws is at an all time minimum. A lot of the people espousing the whole free range parenting stuff never actually walk around and understand what the pedestrian experience is like. If they did, they'd be strongly advocating for better road design and pedestrian paths. But you rarely see the two groups intersect.
- riffraff 3y ago
  I grew up in a small town where everybody drove everywhere and bike lane did not exist, but as a kid we grew up biking on the roads or walking around. Our typical soccer pitch was a partly secluded street, and getting the ball stuck under a car was the norm. Now in my home town there are zero kids on the street. Culture has shifted drastically.
scaramanga 3y ago
You should read the paper. That's basically what it's about. eg. car oriented neighbourhoods mean kids don't get to play as much, and that's a factor which is independent of economic/social status. But also other socio-economic factors can lead to similar outcomes (eg. underfunded schools, longer work hours for parents, and the like).
CalRobert 3y ago
They aren't, sadly. We moved to the Netherlands and seeing kids out on their own is great. It makes me for kids who lack this freedom though.
Tade0 3y ago
I see it as a scapegoat. The real reason is this: https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/assets/mc/eekins/2014_08/parents/parks1.png https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/assets... According to this poll from 2014, 43% Americans think that the government should require 12-year-olds to play at public parks under supervision. You could create the most walkable neighbourhood in the world and not achieve much in this regard.
- BytesAndGears 3y ago
  I feel like the problem though is that people don’t trust their community, and they don’t trust that the kids will be safe. If the child’s playground is right next to a block of houses and shops with people walking around all day, it is much less likely that the child is taken away. Whether it’s actually safer, I’m not entirely sure, but it definitely feels safer to have your kid playing near a busy pedestrian area, compared to an abandoned playground down a quiet road at 4pm. And the feeling is what matters regardless. And that is a big part, but also just the feeling of trusting your neighbors increases when you live in a walkable place and see your neighbors all the time. [0] That source isn’t maybe the most thorough, but it echoes my experience of moving to a quiet but walkable neighborhood in the Netherlands from the US. People really do trust their neighbors much more here, and I’ve changed in that regard too. Everyone is always offering to help each other out. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/
- Mawr 3y ago
  That's not what those poll results mean. The way parents interpreted the poll is not "Given a hypothetical park somewhere in the world, should..." But rather "Given the current state of parks in America, should..." The parents are most likely right, it currently probably is unsafe for kids to be alone in public parks. But that is not because american parents hold dogmatic beliefs about kid independence, they're just making a judgement call based on how unsafe parks currently are.
- qball 3y ago
  >You could create the most walkable neighbourhood in the world and not achieve much in this regard. As always, giving into hysteria only leads to more hysteria. The massive expansion of the rights of angry Karens to summon State guns on command that occurred somewhere in the 1980s is why the current homebuying generation doesn't care about "walkability" in the first place: the generations that grew up under those conditions have simply adapted with mansion-sized homes because if you don't have a private version of what used to be a third space free from Karen's prying eyes, you don't get a space at all. It shouldn't be lost on anyone that the people who most want walkable neighborhoods "for the children" are also the people who are going to destroy those benefits once they see the results of the other things they vote for on the street outside "for the children's safety". So no, I see no reason to build things the way they want and agree that tendency towards isolation is mainly because by and large we remain rich enough to avoid addressing the elephant in the room.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
I had plenty of access to play without driving anywhere. I spent hours and hours playing on my driveway and in my yard with minimal supervision.
- amrocha 3y ago
  I hope you see how sad that statement is. Kids in truly free places ride the train around the entire city by themselves.
  - 93po 3y ago
    "Free" is probably the wrong word. They get to do that in places that have a strong social fabric. The diversity of America combined with a capitalism-induced culture of pitting people against each other makes that impossible in the US.
    - amrocha 3y ago
      I think free is the right word. A "strong social fabric" is necessary for a truly free place. The US is not very free.
- palm-tree 3y ago
  Wow, a yard AND a driveway? I think the idea here is that children need to have the opportunity to explore the wider world independently, not just a 50 metre circle around their home.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  Playing in your yard isn't really "minimal supervision". You probably just didn't know how often your parents checked on you. And you would have known that your parent could just look outside and see you. As a 8 or 9-year-old, could you go to a friends house, to the store, or to school without parental supervision? Did you have safe bike lanes to do this? Was there safe public transportation? Sidewalks on busier streets? Safe crosswalks where the cars are supposed to stop by law - and are those laws enforced heavily to keep you safe? Could you play independently outside of your yard?

How are children in car-centric societies supposed to be independent when they need adults to drive them to places?

Apocryphon 3y ago

They could bike, but how many neighborhoods are safely bikeable?

b112 3y ago
Every one I've ever seen. Most places I've seen, yes in the US, have bike paths, and houses are typically in a separate area from main thoroughfares. Why wouldn't a kid bike to a friend's house, or a local park?
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Not all bike paths exist in quiet suburbs. Some exist along busy main roads, which make them dangerous even for adult riders.
  - asveikau 3y ago
    I suspect this depends on a North American centric definition of "busy main road" and "bike path".
  - b112 3y ago
    That's not really a bike path, now is it? It's a painted lane on a road. I've never been in a place where I had to take a "busy main road" to get around locally. Cross it sometimes, sure, which can be done at a light. This sort of highlights the problem. Over-protectiveness, by examining the worst that can happen, and the worst scenario.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      Well, frankly, perhaps you haven't been to that many places.
    - caconym_ 3y ago
      I've been riding in a big west coast city for the better part of two decades, and I have definitely not been able to rely on dedicated bike paths (or even multimodal "trails") to get around. I mostly ride in the road, and often in the car lane rather than a paint-separated bike lane when I judge that the latter is unsafe (can happen for various reasons but mostly conflicts with cars turning right, pulling out, etc.). Despite that, I've avoided bad accidents and generally felt pretty safe, but only because I survived long enough to develop an acute intuition for when drivers are about to do something stupid/illegal/dangerous. Previous and contemporaneous experience driving a car on the same streets was also very important. I would not trust these streets with my daughter's safety on a bike, and I honestly won't trust her to read the idiots' minds until she has some experience doing so from inside a heavy steel cage. Riding within neighborhoods like the one I live in now is a different question, though some people do drive quite fast through here, and the size of the typical modern car makes clearances and sight-lines rather tight. I do see a lot of older kids out on their own walking, often to and from school, which I think is great.
      - b112 3y ago
        I've been riding in a big west coast city for the better part of two decades, and I have definitely not been able to rely on dedicated bike paths (or even multimodal "trails") to get around. Fair enough, but that's not what I said. I said locally, and neighbourhood. You elude to this later in your comment, but it seems unjust to reply, and refue my comment, while changing scope. These are kids. They can bike locally to friends houses, or a corner store, or a non-central local strip mall, without hitting main roads. Which you in fact agree with, later in your comment! It doesn't need to be all or nothing, people. Biking in local neighbourhoods can be safe, and it can still be dicey on the main roads.
        caconym_ 3y ago
        > I said locally, and neighbourhood. I think the problem with your model is that it conflates these two concepts, which may sometimes be appropriate but definitely isn't universal. For example, if you walk about 3/4 of a block east from my house you will hit a relatively busy arterial that is honestly one of the more dangerous roads I've ever ridden on, with broken sight lines due to parked cars (which also constitute a dooring hazard), lots of cars pulling in and out from side streets and parking spots, delivery drivers blocking the bike lane, a busy pedestrian crossing (again with very poor visibility), and cracked and rutted pavement. Just from their small stature alone, a child riding on this road would be in significantly more danger than an adult would, to say nothing of the skill and experience it takes to navigate so many simultaneous conflicts safely. On the other hand, if you walk west from my house, you can go the better part of a mile through a quiet, shady neighborhood before hitting a main road. Now what is "local" and what is "neighborhood"? Is the grocery store about a 3 minute walk east of my house not "local" just because to get there you have to at least cross this busy, relatively dangerous arterial? I don't think that makes sense. However, it's definitely not part of my neighborhood in the go ride around the neighborhood sense I understood as a child growing up in the suburbs. So in my view I am not changing the scope of the conversation, but rather trying to draw your attention to a distinction that may not exist in the locales you have experience with, but is important in some of those you don't.
- Geezus_42 3y ago
  Never seen a bike path in any neighborhood in the part of the US I live in. I'm sure they exist somewhere, but they are definitely not common. The are bike paths in downtown areas, but not in the suburbs.
- winrid 3y ago
  I live in a decently nice neighborhood in San Jose. Houses $2-3m. People constantly run the stop signs, they don't slow down at all, 30-40mph. I've only lived here one month and I already saw a car hit a pedestrian on a scooter at an intersection (and the guy just drove off). The issue is just don't care, it seems. :(
- D13Fd 3y ago
  My street is fine. But it’s a quarter mile long, and the road it connects to is nearly impassable for pedestrians or bikes. The road is narrow, curvy with steep 5-20 ft high wooded or fenced hills on either side. It has no shoulder. It’s technically a 35mph road, but cars can come around the bend at 35-50 mph at any time and you have nowhere to go. You just have to trust that they will see you and not hit you.
- rsaxvc 3y ago
  There's a bike path in my suburb, at least a mile from my house, requiring crossing two thoroughfares to reach it. Since moving here I've effectively stopped riding because of the drivers.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Statistically speaking, roads are quickly becoming more and more unsafe for drivers, let alone pedestrians and bikers. Cars are much larger than they were in 90s, people are driving more recklessly than ever and enforcement of traffic laws is at an all time minimum. A lot of the people espousing the whole free range parenting stuff never actually walk around and understand what the pedestrian experience is like. If they did, they'd be strongly advocating for better road design and pedestrian paths. But you rarely see the two groups intersect.
riffraff 3y ago
I grew up in a small town where everybody drove everywhere and bike lane did not exist, but as a kid we grew up biking on the roads or walking around. Our typical soccer pitch was a partly secluded street, and getting the ball stuck under a car was the norm. Now in my home town there are zero kids on the street. Culture has shifted drastically.

scaramanga 3y ago

You should read the paper. That's basically what it's about. eg. car oriented neighbourhoods mean kids don't get to play as much, and that's a factor which is independent of economic/social status. But also other socio-economic factors can lead to similar outcomes (eg. underfunded schools, longer work hours for parents, and the like).

CalRobert 3y ago

They aren't, sadly. We moved to the Netherlands and seeing kids out on their own is great. It makes me for kids who lack this freedom though.

Tade0 3y ago

I see it as a scapegoat. The real reason is this: https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/assets/mc/eekins/2014_08/parents/parks1.png https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/assets... According to this poll from 2014, 43% Americans think that the government should require 12-year-olds to play at public parks under supervision. You could create the most walkable neighbourhood in the world and not achieve much in this regard.

BytesAndGears 3y ago
I feel like the problem though is that people don’t trust their community, and they don’t trust that the kids will be safe. If the child’s playground is right next to a block of houses and shops with people walking around all day, it is much less likely that the child is taken away. Whether it’s actually safer, I’m not entirely sure, but it definitely feels safer to have your kid playing near a busy pedestrian area, compared to an abandoned playground down a quiet road at 4pm. And the feeling is what matters regardless. And that is a big part, but also just the feeling of trusting your neighbors increases when you live in a walkable place and see your neighbors all the time. [0] That source isn’t maybe the most thorough, but it echoes my experience of moving to a quiet but walkable neighborhood in the Netherlands from the US. People really do trust their neighbors much more here, and I’ve changed in that regard too. Everyone is always offering to help each other out. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/
Mawr 3y ago
That's not what those poll results mean. The way parents interpreted the poll is not "Given a hypothetical park somewhere in the world, should..." But rather "Given the current state of parks in America, should..." The parents are most likely right, it currently probably is unsafe for kids to be alone in public parks. But that is not because american parents hold dogmatic beliefs about kid independence, they're just making a judgement call based on how unsafe parks currently are.
qball 3y ago
>You could create the most walkable neighbourhood in the world and not achieve much in this regard. As always, giving into hysteria only leads to more hysteria. The massive expansion of the rights of angry Karens to summon State guns on command that occurred somewhere in the 1980s is why the current homebuying generation doesn't care about "walkability" in the first place: the generations that grew up under those conditions have simply adapted with mansion-sized homes because if you don't have a private version of what used to be a third space free from Karen's prying eyes, you don't get a space at all. It shouldn't be lost on anyone that the people who most want walkable neighborhoods "for the children" are also the people who are going to destroy those benefits once they see the results of the other things they vote for on the street outside "for the children's safety". So no, I see no reason to build things the way they want and agree that tendency towards isolation is mainly because by and large we remain rich enough to avoid addressing the elephant in the room.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

I had plenty of access to play without driving anywhere. I spent hours and hours playing on my driveway and in my yard with minimal supervision.

amrocha 3y ago
I hope you see how sad that statement is. Kids in truly free places ride the train around the entire city by themselves.
- 93po 3y ago
  "Free" is probably the wrong word. They get to do that in places that have a strong social fabric. The diversity of America combined with a capitalism-induced culture of pitting people against each other makes that impossible in the US.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    I think free is the right word. A "strong social fabric" is necessary for a truly free place. The US is not very free.
palm-tree 3y ago
Wow, a yard AND a driveway? I think the idea here is that children need to have the opportunity to explore the wider world independently, not just a 50 metre circle around their home.
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
Playing in your yard isn't really "minimal supervision". You probably just didn't know how often your parents checked on you. And you would have known that your parent could just look outside and see you. As a 8 or 9-year-old, could you go to a friends house, to the store, or to school without parental supervision? Did you have safe bike lanes to do this? Was there safe public transportation? Sidewalks on busier streets? Safe crosswalks where the cars are supposed to stop by law - and are those laws enforced heavily to keep you safe? Could you play independently outside of your yard?