7 ms·

I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to

I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifically chose a house on a dead-end street full of retirees in order to lessen the danger of one of my children impulsively running into the street after a ball. It's nuts. I grew up in an NJ suburb in the '90s and I don't have memories of insanity like what I've seen here.

fastneutron 3y ago
Ditto. It’s not the breathless hysteria about child abduction or (conversely) busybody neighbors calling the cops on unaccompanied minors that keep my kids inside. It’s the insane drivers in 4 ton lifted pickups and the town’s refusal to lower the speed limit, or even post “Children Playing” signs that does it.
- donatj 3y ago
  Lowering the speed limit isn't going to get the guy in the glass packed souped up Honda who blows through the stop sign in front of my house multiple times a day to actually slow down. That's that dudes whole deal. It's just going to give highly attentive people tickets that want to get to work at a reasonable speed like 30.
  - kspacewalk2 3y ago
    Speed limit signs are almost useless, especially if not enforced (preferably by speed cameras, preferably without announcing their location with signs). The correct solution to get that guy to stop is to make the street less deadly by design. It should be narrowed, made more winding and have visual 'clutter' added like trees, flower planters, etc. It should be intensely uncomfortable to speed more than 5-ish mph, and people who choose to do so anyway need to meet a traffic calming measure and be on the phone to their body shop well before they speed up enough to endanger a life.
    - amerkhalid 3y ago
      In our neighborhood, some streets have speeding problem. Some neighbors asked city to install speed bumps but the city refuses to do so those because then emergency vehicles will be slowed down too.
      - kspacewalk2 3y ago
        In our Canadian city, the speed bumps have breaks that allow wide-axle vehicles (buses, emergency vehicles) to pass with minimal braking[0]. Some large passenger vehicles can get through the same way, but for most vehicles it's a speed bump. The issue with speed bumps is that it's just not a good traffic calming design. Why should a vehicle slow down to, say, 20 kmh at random spots when the limit is 40 kmh? Traffic tables[1] are much better, in that if they're properly installed, you don't need to slow down if you're already going the speed limit. They should be installed at pedestrian crossings to make the crossing level with the sidewalk (cars go up and down) instead of being level with the street (pedestrians go down, then up). The street should be narrowed at pedestrian crossings too, and at all intersections (no parking there anyway). [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/sQLFu4zs4AkjNF6r6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/sQLFu4zs4AkjNF6r6 [1] https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/vertical-speed-control-elements/speed-table/ https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/stre...
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    > at a reasonable speed like 30. Hitting a kid at 30 is going to cause some harm. I don’t think that 30 is a good compromise. They are rare where I live but street layouts which promote better driving would help. They have low/no kerbs and wind through planting etc to keep speed down. However this messes up a commute to work, so unfortunately it’s not a perfect solution.
    - donatj 3y ago
      If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars. Hitting someone with a 5000lb chunk of metal at any speed is going to cause harm. The solution here is just to not hit them to begin with. I think it's 30mph is a reasonable speed for not hitting people.
      - InSteady 3y ago
        30 MPH is not in no way a reasonable speed for side streets in a neighborhood that you want to be walkable and child-friendly. Save 30 mph for major arterials. If neighborhood side streets have 30 mph speed limits people are just going to blow through any stopsigns the city puts in to pretend it is pedestrian friendly, and they are going to kill people when they do so.
      - kspacewalk2 3y ago
        The likelihood of severe injury or death goes down dramatically with lower speeds. A reasonable speed is a variable concept, but certainly minor residential streets should never have speeds in excess of 40 kmh (25 mph). My city recently reduced the limit to 40 kmh on all such streets. Now they just have to go the other 95% of the work - physically designing the streets for their posted limits, so that the option of speeding is simply removed (unless you're okay with regularly spending money at a body shop).
      - josephcsible 3y ago
        > If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars. Careful, some people actually want to ban cars.
- kspacewalk2 3y ago
  What will "Children playing" signs do? The concept always amused me. Does anyone seriously think a driver, having already made a decision to be a speeding asshole, will change their behaviour because of some lame, barely noticeable sign? It's even sadder to see those homemade ones people put up on the boulevards. Your city failed to properly design streets and enforce traffic laws. This happened because, over many decades, the voters in your city wanted it to be so, and voted accordingly. Unless the attitudes of voters change, and/or people who want this to change but don't vote in municipal elections start voting, no amount of "think of the children" signs will ever make a dent in the situation. And, while we're at it, slapping a 40 kmh (or whatever American equivalent) sign on a wide straight "residential street" where you can comfortably do double that speed without risking a trip to the body shop is about as effective. Physical re-design and effective (preferably automated) speed enforcement. Nothing else works, no point wasting steel and paint.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Are "children playing" even effective? Do you think the dangerous problem drivers are actually giving a shit about them? Similar for speed limit signs unless you have strict and regular enforcement. Although at least the prudent drivers would obey those.
  - Maximus9000 3y ago
    Nope. I keep mine out hoping to affect even 1% of speeders - mostly parents who are speeding but really should know better.
ethanbond 3y ago
IMO traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are. In the US, licenses do need to be easy to get otherwise you lock people out of society (unfortunately), but they don't need to be easy to keep and you should drive with constant awareness that you will be taken to the cleaners for mishaps. Automated enforcement tech should be widespread and incur license revocations and salary/wealth-adjusted fines left and right.
- jahewson 3y ago
  License revocations are only effective for people who respect rules.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    There are tons of "minor" infractions committed by people who see themselves as perfectly responsible and law-abiding. And they are to the degree that they wouldn't drive without a license and would be legitimately deterred by that threat, but they just view various infractions as a normal part of driving (because they are, as our enforcement schemes make clear!)
  - acdha 3y ago
    Or who fear consequences. That means enforcement has to be effective enough that people know there’s a high risk of consequences - for example, if driving on a suspended license means your car is sold at auction, people will care a lot more about following safety rules.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Meh, having a suspended license doesn't actually stop you from being able to drive. Both physically you don't have to swipe in to drive but also legally you can still drive [1]. [1]: https://www.graciamintz.com/blog/2021/march/how-to-get-a-hardship-license-in-maryland-after-/ https://www.graciamintz.com/blog/2021/march/how-to-get-a-har...
- giantg2 3y ago
  "licenses do need to be easy to get" This is what allows the situation we have. People either don't get caught, or only get caught after injury has occurred. "traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are." It depends on the infection. Many are already severe, such as being arrested for racing, going 25+ over the limit, DUI, etc. DUI is a factor in about a 3rd of fatalities and is already punished severely. Seems like the punishment focus isn't working. The preemptive education portion is more promising.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
Your memory must be bad because I remember cars driving down my suburban street at highway speeds in the mid 90s. The lesson imparted as a kid was to always look both ways, assume no one sees you, and get in and out quickly. If you haven’t taught your kids to not impulsively run after balls into streets, that’s on you. Even my 3 year old knows better than to walk into a street after a ball. I literally watched him stop and look both ways yesterday too before walking in to grab his ball. Yes, drivers should slow down in neighborhoods but an ounce of prevention is always better than a pound of cure. You have more control over your kids than the crazies that exist in this world.
- kennethrc 3y ago
  Ditto 70s
- malermeister 3y ago
  The ounce of prevention should be much earlier and much more preventative. It's the fundamental street design that needs to be changed so speeding is no longer an option.
- gosub100 3y ago
  I agree with this. I would argue that an even worse contributor to danger are the neighborhoods where everyone parks on the street, either because the neighborhood homes have no driveways or because it's such a high cost of living that most houses are rented out to 3+ individuals leading to overflow parking. I roamed the streets as a 90s kid and while I dont remember if people drove faster/slower then (I do remember there being less traffic, but that's subjective and fallible) I do remember being able to look down most of the block when I crossed the street. But in densely populated areas, going between parked cars (especially as a short child) greatly obstructs the view.
- acdha 3y ago
  It’s not just bad memory: in the 90s, cars were considerably smaller and less powerful – yes, people had 70s barges but those had much lower acceleration than an SUV and the driver was less insulated from the road and had better visibility. The other big change is Google Maps/Waze/etc. — most people did not know every possible side street and tended to stay on major roads more. To your other point, yes, people need to teach children to fear cars but that also means grownups should be thinking about how much public space we’ve taken away from everyone to remove responsibility from drivers. It’s not unreasonable to think that balance is unhealthy, just as most of us have decided that we shouldn’t have factories in neighborhoods any more.
Pxtl 3y ago
Ironically, the presence of lots of little keyholes results in a sprawlier urban form that results in things being spread further apart and funnels traffic into massive, wide arteries, which encourages in-city speeding habits. Not blaming you for picking what works for your family, it's just a "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Old fashioned streetcar-suburb cities that are just dense, gridded traffic are safer. For example, in Toronto: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/our-most-dangerous-streets-huge-new-collision-database-points-to-toronto-s-postwar-suburbs/article_4a2bf97a-7bc0-5f77-836a-63917c80176e.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/our-most-dangerous-streets-... Since the article is paywalled, here's the Tweet showing the dangerous-intersections map: https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1509864492703916037 https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1509864492703916037 And here's a blogpost showing the age of neighborhoods built: https://idragovic.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/toronto-building-construction-dates/ https://idragovic.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/toronto-building-... So basically, at least in the case of Toronto, postwar suburbs with winding and dead-end residential roads with wide, high-speed corridors produce dangerous intersections.
malermeister 3y ago
There's a great video by the urbanist youtuber Not Just Bikes about this very topic - he ended up moving to the Netherlands so his kids can safely play on the street and independently meet up with friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw
ip26 3y ago
It doesn't even take terrifying drivers; really, it's all cars. It wasn't until I got to know some four year olds that I realized how little regard they have for cars. Squirrels have more respect for the hazard of moving automobiles.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Well yeah, they're 4 years old. They need some level of supervision if they have little survival skills or common sense. There has to be some level of supervision until a minimal level of survival is possible (assuming we want near zero losses).
mrtksn 3y ago
The mayor of a municipality in Istanbul proudly announced that they built walls around a small city park to keep kids safe. And I was the only weirdo who asked why they didn’t put measures in place against speeding drivers instead. People see completely normal to take their kids to this walled garden that looks like a prison yard with a few trees and a playground. This hysteria of every stranger must be a criminal and everything is dangerous successfully pushed people into compartments. Eastern Europe is honestly much more free than all the places I’ve been. To be honest, Eastern Europe does have safety problems but it’s mostly about self harm caused by nihilism, maybe that’s part of the reason why people don’t freak out about everything in first place but when I’m in Eastern Europe I feel significantly less stressed than when I’m in the UK or Turkey. Maybe an approach somewhere between Eastern European nihilism and Western “everything is extremely important” mentality must be reached. Put the speed bumpers against the maniacs and let the kids learn how to operate without the safety nets. Like at the ending of “Demolition Man” movie, maybe some of us need to take stuff a bit more seriously and others relax a bit.
- soco 3y ago
  Also Eastern Europe has by far the highest road crash fatalities - according to Eurostat[1] Romania tops it. So some worry might be earned... even when other people are less stressed about dying in a car crash. https://actmedia.eu/daily/eurostat-romania-the-highest-rate-of-road-accident-deaths-in-the-eu/97590 https://actmedia.eu/daily/eurostat-romania-the-highest-rate-...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    True. Also unhealthy diet, tobacco and alcohol abuse is problematic too in the self harm department. However the solution shouldn’t be ban everything and regulate the environment up to babysitting levels.
clukic 3y ago
I live in Brooklyn in Bed Stuy, and my neighbor who has lived here his entire life told me how he used to play football in the street everyday in the summer when he was a kid. There was always a pick up game, and when I asked he said occasionally a car would need to get past and they would finish the play, and then wave it by. Today, I don't let my daughter step one foot into that street for fear she'll get swiped by an Ebike or an Uber driver in an Escalade doing 40. Drivers today have an expectation of complete ownership of the streets, and kids lost one of their few play spaces.
rconti 3y ago
So you chose a house on a dead-end street but also are still afraid to let your children play outside?
- acuozzo 3y ago
  I let them do it much more than I used to; closer to normal than zero as it used to be.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I've found even living on a dead-end street is not enough. I live about 3 doors down from the end of my street, and people still fly down the street at 50+MPH, turn around at the end of the dead end, and then fly back the other way at 50+MPH. - They aren't even going anywhere, but still have to speed while doing it! - My only explanation is that they're just idiots. It doesn't make any sense to me.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      some time ago i crossed a street that was no longer than 200m. both ends had buildings forcing you to make a turn, yet an idiot managed to race down that short piece of road at full speed. his rear view mirror slammed into my backpack. nothing else happened. luckily the street was otherwise empty at the time. it usually isn't. when i see someone speeding like that, i imagine myself with a bazooka... (well, actually i'd rather have one of those guns from scifi movies that just vaporize the target, or better yet, just vaporize the car, leaving the driver sitting on the street dumbfounded.)
jollyllama 3y ago
Great observation. It's not inherently the street or urban/suburban design that changed, something else has changed.
deleted 3y ago
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latchkey 3y ago
I'm house sitting in a gated community area of Irvine, CA for the week. I was walking down the sidewalk and watched a woman drive past me, staring down at her phone. I thought to myself, she's going to get into an accident. 10 seconds later, she's up on the curb, luckily misses a tree, corrects and keeps on driving as if nothing happened. F'cking nuts.
King1st 3y ago
Crazy new drivers have always been around. you probably just live in a more populated area now. I remember People ripping down my roads in the 90s.
303uru 3y ago
I live in Denver proper. And there are three middle aged men in pickups that essentially terrorize the neighborhood in their lifted Ram pickups. Constantly doing 45+ in a 20, if a car tries to park or pull into a driveway they curb hop and freak out. Cops refuse to do a thing about it, probably because they're clearly on the same team (white, male, wraparound Oakleys, tan hoodies with flags on the shoulder, gun stickers on the truck, etc...). But I'd be insane to let my girls run free in the neighborhood with that threat. I'm a competent cyclist and I've nearly been killed by two of them.
- acuozzo 3y ago
  Gah! That sounds terrifying and infuriating. It's not so scary here; mostly 20-somethings with no life beyond "car culture", AFAICT.
westhanover 3y ago
I live in an NJ suburb. If I see a car speeding around I’ll ring their doorbell and ask them to stop. If they don’t, first warning is air out the tires and second warning is losing your windshield. I’ve never had to ask three times.
- acuozzo 3y ago
  How do you track them down if they're not neighbors?

fastneutron 3y ago

Ditto. It’s not the breathless hysteria about child abduction or (conversely) busybody neighbors calling the cops on unaccompanied minors that keep my kids inside. It’s the insane drivers in 4 ton lifted pickups and the town’s refusal to lower the speed limit, or even post “Children Playing” signs that does it.

donatj 3y ago
Lowering the speed limit isn't going to get the guy in the glass packed souped up Honda who blows through the stop sign in front of my house multiple times a day to actually slow down. That's that dudes whole deal. It's just going to give highly attentive people tickets that want to get to work at a reasonable speed like 30.
- kspacewalk2 3y ago
  Speed limit signs are almost useless, especially if not enforced (preferably by speed cameras, preferably without announcing their location with signs). The correct solution to get that guy to stop is to make the street less deadly by design. It should be narrowed, made more winding and have visual 'clutter' added like trees, flower planters, etc. It should be intensely uncomfortable to speed more than 5-ish mph, and people who choose to do so anyway need to meet a traffic calming measure and be on the phone to their body shop well before they speed up enough to endanger a life.
  - amerkhalid 3y ago
    In our neighborhood, some streets have speeding problem. Some neighbors asked city to install speed bumps but the city refuses to do so those because then emergency vehicles will be slowed down too.
    - kspacewalk2 3y ago
      In our Canadian city, the speed bumps have breaks that allow wide-axle vehicles (buses, emergency vehicles) to pass with minimal braking[0]. Some large passenger vehicles can get through the same way, but for most vehicles it's a speed bump. The issue with speed bumps is that it's just not a good traffic calming design. Why should a vehicle slow down to, say, 20 kmh at random spots when the limit is 40 kmh? Traffic tables[1] are much better, in that if they're properly installed, you don't need to slow down if you're already going the speed limit. They should be installed at pedestrian crossings to make the crossing level with the sidewalk (cars go up and down) instead of being level with the street (pedestrians go down, then up). The street should be narrowed at pedestrian crossings too, and at all intersections (no parking there anyway). [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/sQLFu4zs4AkjNF6r6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/sQLFu4zs4AkjNF6r6 [1] https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/vertical-speed-control-elements/speed-table/ https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/stre...
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > at a reasonable speed like 30. Hitting a kid at 30 is going to cause some harm. I don’t think that 30 is a good compromise. They are rare where I live but street layouts which promote better driving would help. They have low/no kerbs and wind through planting etc to keep speed down. However this messes up a commute to work, so unfortunately it’s not a perfect solution.
  - donatj 3y ago
    If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars. Hitting someone with a 5000lb chunk of metal at any speed is going to cause harm. The solution here is just to not hit them to begin with. I think it's 30mph is a reasonable speed for not hitting people.
    - InSteady 3y ago
      30 MPH is not in no way a reasonable speed for side streets in a neighborhood that you want to be walkable and child-friendly. Save 30 mph for major arterials. If neighborhood side streets have 30 mph speed limits people are just going to blow through any stopsigns the city puts in to pretend it is pedestrian friendly, and they are going to kill people when they do so.
    - kspacewalk2 3y ago
      The likelihood of severe injury or death goes down dramatically with lower speeds. A reasonable speed is a variable concept, but certainly minor residential streets should never have speeds in excess of 40 kmh (25 mph). My city recently reduced the limit to 40 kmh on all such streets. Now they just have to go the other 95% of the work - physically designing the streets for their posted limits, so that the option of speeding is simply removed (unless you're okay with regularly spending money at a body shop).
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars. Careful, some people actually want to ban cars.
kspacewalk2 3y ago
What will "Children playing" signs do? The concept always amused me. Does anyone seriously think a driver, having already made a decision to be a speeding asshole, will change their behaviour because of some lame, barely noticeable sign? It's even sadder to see those homemade ones people put up on the boulevards. Your city failed to properly design streets and enforce traffic laws. This happened because, over many decades, the voters in your city wanted it to be so, and voted accordingly. Unless the attitudes of voters change, and/or people who want this to change but don't vote in municipal elections start voting, no amount of "think of the children" signs will ever make a dent in the situation. And, while we're at it, slapping a 40 kmh (or whatever American equivalent) sign on a wide straight "residential street" where you can comfortably do double that speed without risking a trip to the body shop is about as effective. Physical re-design and effective (preferably automated) speed enforcement. Nothing else works, no point wasting steel and paint.
giantg2 3y ago
Are "children playing" even effective? Do you think the dangerous problem drivers are actually giving a shit about them? Similar for speed limit signs unless you have strict and regular enforcement. Although at least the prudent drivers would obey those.
- Maximus9000 3y ago
  Nope. I keep mine out hoping to affect even 1% of speeders - mostly parents who are speeding but really should know better.

ethanbond 3y ago

IMO traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are. In the US, licenses do need to be easy to get otherwise you lock people out of society (unfortunately), but they don't need to be easy to keep and you should drive with constant awareness that you will be taken to the cleaners for mishaps. Automated enforcement tech should be widespread and incur license revocations and salary/wealth-adjusted fines left and right.

jahewson 3y ago
License revocations are only effective for people who respect rules.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  There are tons of "minor" infractions committed by people who see themselves as perfectly responsible and law-abiding. And they are to the degree that they wouldn't drive without a license and would be legitimately deterred by that threat, but they just view various infractions as a normal part of driving (because they are, as our enforcement schemes make clear!)
- acdha 3y ago
  Or who fear consequences. That means enforcement has to be effective enough that people know there’s a high risk of consequences - for example, if driving on a suspended license means your car is sold at auction, people will care a lot more about following safety rules.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Meh, having a suspended license doesn't actually stop you from being able to drive. Both physically you don't have to swipe in to drive but also legally you can still drive [1]. [1]: https://www.graciamintz.com/blog/2021/march/how-to-get-a-hardship-license-in-maryland-after-/ https://www.graciamintz.com/blog/2021/march/how-to-get-a-har...
giantg2 3y ago
"licenses do need to be easy to get" This is what allows the situation we have. People either don't get caught, or only get caught after injury has occurred. "traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are." It depends on the infection. Many are already severe, such as being arrested for racing, going 25+ over the limit, DUI, etc. DUI is a factor in about a 3rd of fatalities and is already punished severely. Seems like the punishment focus isn't working. The preemptive education portion is more promising.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

Your memory must be bad because I remember cars driving down my suburban street at highway speeds in the mid 90s. The lesson imparted as a kid was to always look both ways, assume no one sees you, and get in and out quickly. If you haven’t taught your kids to not impulsively run after balls into streets, that’s on you. Even my 3 year old knows better than to walk into a street after a ball. I literally watched him stop and look both ways yesterday too before walking in to grab his ball. Yes, drivers should slow down in neighborhoods but an ounce of prevention is always better than a pound of cure. You have more control over your kids than the crazies that exist in this world.

kennethrc 3y ago
Ditto 70s
malermeister 3y ago
The ounce of prevention should be much earlier and much more preventative. It's the fundamental street design that needs to be changed so speeding is no longer an option.
gosub100 3y ago
I agree with this. I would argue that an even worse contributor to danger are the neighborhoods where everyone parks on the street, either because the neighborhood homes have no driveways or because it's such a high cost of living that most houses are rented out to 3+ individuals leading to overflow parking. I roamed the streets as a 90s kid and while I dont remember if people drove faster/slower then (I do remember there being less traffic, but that's subjective and fallible) I do remember being able to look down most of the block when I crossed the street. But in densely populated areas, going between parked cars (especially as a short child) greatly obstructs the view.
acdha 3y ago
It’s not just bad memory: in the 90s, cars were considerably smaller and less powerful – yes, people had 70s barges but those had much lower acceleration than an SUV and the driver was less insulated from the road and had better visibility. The other big change is Google Maps/Waze/etc. — most people did not know every possible side street and tended to stay on major roads more. To your other point, yes, people need to teach children to fear cars but that also means grownups should be thinking about how much public space we’ve taken away from everyone to remove responsibility from drivers. It’s not unreasonable to think that balance is unhealthy, just as most of us have decided that we shouldn’t have factories in neighborhoods any more.

Pxtl 3y ago

Ironically, the presence of lots of little keyholes results in a sprawlier urban form that results in things being spread further apart and funnels traffic into massive, wide arteries, which encourages in-city speeding habits. Not blaming you for picking what works for your family, it's just a "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Old fashioned streetcar-suburb cities that are just dense, gridded traffic are safer. For example, in Toronto: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/our-most-dangerous-streets-huge-new-collision-database-points-to-toronto-s-postwar-suburbs/article_4a2bf97a-7bc0-5f77-836a-63917c80176e.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/our-most-dangerous-streets-... Since the article is paywalled, here's the Tweet showing the dangerous-intersections map: https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1509864492703916037 https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1509864492703916037 And here's a blogpost showing the age of neighborhoods built: https://idragovic.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/toronto-building-construction-dates/ https://idragovic.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/toronto-building-... So basically, at least in the case of Toronto, postwar suburbs with winding and dead-end residential roads with wide, high-speed corridors produce dangerous intersections.

malermeister 3y ago

There's a great video by the urbanist youtuber Not Just Bikes about this very topic - he ended up moving to the Netherlands so his kids can safely play on the street and independently meet up with friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw

ip26 3y ago

It doesn't even take terrifying drivers; really, it's all cars. It wasn't until I got to know some four year olds that I realized how little regard they have for cars. Squirrels have more respect for the hazard of moving automobiles.

giantg2 3y ago
Well yeah, they're 4 years old. They need some level of supervision if they have little survival skills or common sense. There has to be some level of supervision until a minimal level of survival is possible (assuming we want near zero losses).

mrtksn 3y ago

The mayor of a municipality in Istanbul proudly announced that they built walls around a small city park to keep kids safe. And I was the only weirdo who asked why they didn’t put measures in place against speeding drivers instead. People see completely normal to take their kids to this walled garden that looks like a prison yard with a few trees and a playground. This hysteria of every stranger must be a criminal and everything is dangerous successfully pushed people into compartments. Eastern Europe is honestly much more free than all the places I’ve been. To be honest, Eastern Europe does have safety problems but it’s mostly about self harm caused by nihilism, maybe that’s part of the reason why people don’t freak out about everything in first place but when I’m in Eastern Europe I feel significantly less stressed than when I’m in the UK or Turkey. Maybe an approach somewhere between Eastern European nihilism and Western “everything is extremely important” mentality must be reached. Put the speed bumpers against the maniacs and let the kids learn how to operate without the safety nets. Like at the ending of “Demolition Man” movie, maybe some of us need to take stuff a bit more seriously and others relax a bit.

soco 3y ago
Also Eastern Europe has by far the highest road crash fatalities - according to Eurostat[1] Romania tops it. So some worry might be earned... even when other people are less stressed about dying in a car crash. https://actmedia.eu/daily/eurostat-romania-the-highest-rate-of-road-accident-deaths-in-the-eu/97590 https://actmedia.eu/daily/eurostat-romania-the-highest-rate-...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mrtksn 3y ago
  True. Also unhealthy diet, tobacco and alcohol abuse is problematic too in the self harm department. However the solution shouldn’t be ban everything and regulate the environment up to babysitting levels.

clukic 3y ago

I live in Brooklyn in Bed Stuy, and my neighbor who has lived here his entire life told me how he used to play football in the street everyday in the summer when he was a kid. There was always a pick up game, and when I asked he said occasionally a car would need to get past and they would finish the play, and then wave it by. Today, I don't let my daughter step one foot into that street for fear she'll get swiped by an Ebike or an Uber driver in an Escalade doing 40. Drivers today have an expectation of complete ownership of the streets, and kids lost one of their few play spaces.

rconti 3y ago

So you chose a house on a dead-end street but also are still afraid to let your children play outside?

acuozzo 3y ago
I let them do it much more than I used to; closer to normal than zero as it used to be.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I've found even living on a dead-end street is not enough. I live about 3 doors down from the end of my street, and people still fly down the street at 50+MPH, turn around at the end of the dead end, and then fly back the other way at 50+MPH. - They aren't even going anywhere, but still have to speed while doing it! - My only explanation is that they're just idiots. It doesn't make any sense to me.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    some time ago i crossed a street that was no longer than 200m. both ends had buildings forcing you to make a turn, yet an idiot managed to race down that short piece of road at full speed. his rear view mirror slammed into my backpack. nothing else happened. luckily the street was otherwise empty at the time. it usually isn't. when i see someone speeding like that, i imagine myself with a bazooka... (well, actually i'd rather have one of those guns from scifi movies that just vaporize the target, or better yet, just vaporize the car, leaving the driver sitting on the street dumbfounded.)

jollyllama 3y ago

Great observation. It's not inherently the street or urban/suburban design that changed, something else has changed.

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latchkey 3y ago

I'm house sitting in a gated community area of Irvine, CA for the week. I was walking down the sidewalk and watched a woman drive past me, staring down at her phone. I thought to myself, she's going to get into an accident. 10 seconds later, she's up on the curb, luckily misses a tree, corrects and keeps on driving as if nothing happened. F'cking nuts.

King1st 3y ago

Crazy new drivers have always been around. you probably just live in a more populated area now. I remember People ripping down my roads in the 90s.

303uru 3y ago

I live in Denver proper. And there are three middle aged men in pickups that essentially terrorize the neighborhood in their lifted Ram pickups. Constantly doing 45+ in a 20, if a car tries to park or pull into a driveway they curb hop and freak out. Cops refuse to do a thing about it, probably because they're clearly on the same team (white, male, wraparound Oakleys, tan hoodies with flags on the shoulder, gun stickers on the truck, etc...). But I'd be insane to let my girls run free in the neighborhood with that threat. I'm a competent cyclist and I've nearly been killed by two of them.

acuozzo 3y ago
Gah! That sounds terrifying and infuriating. It's not so scary here; mostly 20-somethings with no life beyond "car culture", AFAICT.

westhanover 3y ago

I live in an NJ suburb. If I see a car speeding around I’ll ring their doorbell and ask them to stop. If they don’t, first warning is air out the tires and second warning is losing your windshield. I’ve never had to ask three times.

acuozzo 3y ago
How do you track them down if they're not neighbors?