361–370 of 391 posts
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I'm trying to look this up but the only hit for "Roger Scruton Risk De-aggregation" is this comment. Any recommendations on where I can read more about this? I've found other Scruton articles that talk about swing sets and stuff but not the term specifically.
It's in his book "How to think seriously about the planet: a case for environmental conservatism" Dont have the page, but the book is good enough that it's worth reading
It's great to allow your kids to take risks, and we do this with our own as much as we can (they're 1 and 3, so "within reason" is still doing some heavy lifting. I pick ticks off of them now and then and patch up their share of bruises). But fundamentally, what I want most is to be somewhere my kids can ride bikes or walk alone to school, to friends, to the shop, etc. from the age of 7 or so. As best I can tell that…
I think cycling is one of those things where it’s important to do it in spite of Canamerica being such a bad place for it, every person cycling normalizes it and pushes indirectly for positive change. Of course it’s also important to directly push for change in city government.
My only times I've near-collision or actual Collision have been with bikes. this is invariably because they far exceed the speed limit in some sections that are really close to pedestrian traffic or because they bike near a curve full of parked cars where he cannot have enough time to break for incoming pedestrian traffic when the bikers going to ~30 miles per hour.
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Well no; speed does increase severity in the case of a collision as you say, but it also directly impacts your stopping distance, even at the same level of alertness/reaction time/etc. If a kid runs out in front of your car, you are both more likely to hit them at 30 mph than 15 mph (due to not being able to stop in time) and more likely to kill them having hit them.
you see, that's exactly the kind of marginal thinking that gets us into these kinds of shut-in situations for children in the name of "safety". that exact scenario, where only the speed difference rather than a myriad of other factors, is material to life and death, is a tiny, and probably an undifferentiable, portion of collisions. putting forth such imagined scenarios as if they present significant risk is poor rat…
Of course they both contribute to the problem. So why not both? Traffic calming is the answer, either way.
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you see, that's exactly the kind of marginal thinking that gets us into these kinds of shut-in situations for children in the name of "safety". that exact scenario, where only the speed difference rather than a myriad of other factors, is material to life and death, is a tiny, and probably an undifferentiable, portion of collisions. putting forth such imagined scenarios as if they present significant risk is poor rat…
And focusing just on distracted driving similarly leads to campaigns that are little more than "you, driver, pay attention" PSAs while ignoring the structural reasons that drivers incorrectly feel safe enough to do so. Of course they both contribute to the problem. So why not both? Traffic calming is the answer, either way.
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Riding the subway is far safer than being driven in a car. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/12/19/heres-how-much-safer-...
Well the fear of letting a child go by themselves would be that they would get lost, kidnapped, or robbed.
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I grow up in a small town in Poland. I was walking on my own to preschool since I was 5 (it was about 400m from the house). If I had kids I'd let them free roam the city.
Seeing elementary kids off on their own in Poland is shocking to me now, even though I was an elementary kid wandering around in the USA 30 years ago. Not sure how the USA took such a bizarre and sad turn.
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This is a movie.
Not really helpful feedback, as it was a movie reflecting the standards of the time. I was a latch-key kid starting at age 7 in the 80s because I hated the daycare that we used after school and advocated for the freedom. I remember being blocks away from home at age 4 or 5 on my own until it was time to eat and heading back home. It really was a different experience. And, I say this as a parent of a 6 year old in a r…
It's great to allow your kids to take risks, and we do this with our own as much as we can (they're 1 and 3, so "within reason" is still doing some heavy lifting. I pick ticks off of them now and then and patch up their share of bruises). But fundamentally, what I want most is to be somewhere my kids can ride bikes or walk alone to school, to friends, to the shop, etc. from the age of 7 or so. As best I can tell that…
I think cycling is one of those things where it’s important to do it in spite of Canamerica being such a bad place for it, every person cycling normalizes it and pushes indirectly for positive change. Of course it’s also important to directly push for change in city government.
In my teens I cycled to my last three years of high school because I could sleep in (bus took over an hour) and visit friends on the way home. Thankfully the highway had a decent shoulder. I wore my helmet and eventually saw the benefit of wearing a neon-orange reflective vest (rather than stowing it once out of parental sight).
Where I’m living now I’m pushing for improved bicycle routes between towns, in part for tourism and so we don’t have to drive our kid to school.
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I think each near collision with a car radicalizes cyclists a bit. While cycling you build up experiences where cars prioritize speed over your safety. Most “annoying cyclists” I’ve met I feel like are arguing for the right things but they have a lot of bitterness.
There are plenty of stupid cyclists who don’t prioritize their own safety. One of my pet peeves is to have bikes on the road in the dark without lights. Most of these people are adults and they should know that a car driver can’t see them.
It's great to allow your kids to take risks, and we do this with our own as much as we can (they're 1 and 3, so "within reason" is still doing some heavy lifting. I pick ticks off of them now and then and patch up their share of bruises). But fundamentally, what I want most is to be somewhere my kids can ride bikes or walk alone to school, to friends, to the shop, etc. from the age of 7 or so. As best I can tell that…
A take from Japan - actually for cycling it's not bad. Even though the infrastructure doesn't have nice separate cycling paths, it's still 16% trips taken by bicycle out here vs 25% in the Netherlands [1]. Most neighborhoods aren't high-speed and streets are tiny, making low-speed cycling not so dangerous, and the proximity of neighborhoods means that kids bike places all the time. [1] https://medium.com/vision-zero-…
With plenty of bright, reflective things on my bike I’m willing to take our kid on the road, and am working on promoting better bikeways around here, for locals and tourists.