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A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

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Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#401

Post by Sirened »

pfarrell wrote: post #385
jtbayly wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean they don't know enough yet? You can improve their state so that crossing the street is quite safe. What do they need to know to avoid being a pedestrian fatality? Here are the top three things.[0] 1. Don't walk under the influence. 2. Don't walk at night. 3. Only cross at an intersection. [0]: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli... .

I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the GP. I read “their current state” as referring to the roads, not to the kids. For example: lack of sidewalks, roads with high speed limits, distracted drivers on phones, lack of other children walking.

++ A lot of people in this thread either live in wonderfully walkable places or have simply never actually tried. Y'all, Google Maps giving you walking directions is not the same thing as walkable lol.

The local high school where I grew up was not exactly walkable. There were multiple uncontrolled crossings (with speed limits over 30mph) and missing sidewalks all over the place that force you to walk on the shoulder/in the gutter.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#402

Post by Tagbert »

rtlfe wrote: post #354
dionidium wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone. This is the thing: the bike racks are gone because so are the kids walking/biking to school. If you let your kid do it, they'll be the only one. I walked to school in the 80s and there were lots of kids in my neighborhood walking to school at the same time. That's a very different experience. I also lived in a neighborhood that was laid out in the early…

> You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Maybe not, but you can do things like: * Live downtown instead of in a suburb * Ask your school / DOT to close the street in front of the school during dropoff and pickup hours * Walk with your kid to school instead of driving them * Support higher-density development in your area

If you live downtown you are unlikely to have a grade school in your area from what I can see of any American cities. Families with school aged children don’t tend to live in the downtowns. Older suburbs are much more walkable in terms of kids walking to school with sidewalks and fewer vehicles than an urban center.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#403

Post by naravara »

asoneth wrote: post #376
jtbayly wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean they don't know enough yet? You can improve their state so that crossing the street is quite safe. What do they need to know to avoid being a pedestrian fatality? Here are the top three things.[0] 1. Don't walk under the influence. 2. Don't walk at night. 3. Only cross at an intersection. [0]: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli... .

That's not particularly relevant to this discussion because walking under the influence is not a major contributor when children are hit or killed by drivers. Children also have different risk factors, for example many trucks and SUV drivers have poor visibility and cannot see sufficiently short road users that are close to the front of the vehicle, for example when stopped at a stop sign or traffic light.

Worse yet, most cars now are lifted high enough to where the block line-of-sight for pedestrians and cyclists (and even people in reasonably sized sedans and compact cars) from being able to see oncoming traffic from an intersection when they’re parked on a corner.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#404

Post by naravara »

uranium wrote: post #116
fnordpiglet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major difference between when I grew up and now is the prevalence of the severely mentally ill living on city streets. Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle? As a 45 year old I’m frightened often enough - I can’t imagine my daughter being forced to navigate those situations alone. The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is…

"Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle?" Yes. We live in San Francisco, and our kids went to a daycare in the Civic Center. We walked [with the kids] by many homeless people every weekday for years. Our interactions with them were almost universally positive; they'd clear the sidewalk to let kids through, try to keep kids from seeing drug use, chat and share candy, etc. On c…

Honestly I’ve never seen it as bad as in certain parts of Seattle. The meth use is very readily apparent and it has people behaving way out of line and highly erratic or aggressive.

That said, I still worry more about car traffic and reckless drivers than the homeless. But having aggressive people on drugs yelling at passers by is not an ideal or safe environment for kids to be in. For one thing, it distracts the people in cars. . .

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#405

Post by boomboomsubban »

a2tech wrote: post #234
DFHippie wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The cities are actually safer . The chief difference is that the segment of the media dedicated to keeping people fearful, particularly of their neighbors, is enormous now. It was always the case that media liked stories of conflict, but this was moderated by a sense of propriety and responsibility to the community. Now, certain voices have enormous megaphones and no restraints and the paranoia and anger they a…

My wife grew up in the city, and I grew up in the country (not the pretend 'doctors commute to the city and have 10 acres they pretend to farm and raise horses on' but 'white trash, holy shit there's no work' county) and my wife is HORRIFIED by how much violence and random crime there is where I come from. My family still asks how we can live in the city since its so dangerous while meth heads are stealing anhydrous…

If it's anything like my experience in a rural town, they'll bemoan the dangers of the cities while Tom's kid got into meth and conned/robbed ten people they know, Dick's kid goes to the bar every night then drives home drunk to beat his family, and Harry's kid was hiding that he had HIV to sleep with several women in town.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#406

Post by reissbaker »

ctime wrote: post #382
jasonfarnon wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the remark about immigrants make sense? The typical immigrant can't be more concerned about fitting in that the typical native. Because the typical native's behavior determines what "fitting in" means.

There is a saying in Ireland called "More Irish than the Irish" and refers to immigrants and non-locals who take up all of the local culture to extreme (compared to the average) levels. Immigrants are statistically the most law abiding and often times, even conservative, members of a a community and it probably is one measure of long-term survival (esp. in the U.S. while living under the microscope of a work visa) so…

Similarly, the Jewish Talmud considers "Ba'alei Teshuva" — Jews who either were born not-religious and became religious later, or who were born religious, left the community, and later returned — to be generally more "righteous," aka, rule-following, than people who simply grew up following the rules of the religion. Part of the explanation given in the Talmud is that Ba'alei Teshuva made a concrete choice to follow the religion's rules, whereas someone who was raised in that environment and never left is just doing what they feel is natural.

Outsiders (after a few years) are more aware of in-group rules since they don't feel natural, and for those there by choice — whether it be immigrants to a different country, or the newly-religious — presumably they're there because they want to be a part of the group, rather than taking it for granted. So they're often both hyper-aware of the rules, and place a higher value on them.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#408

Post by jrochkind1 »

lelandbatey wrote: post #371
WalterBright wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cities are safer than they've ever been Seattle has seen a large rise in violent crime, and it's hottest around the homeless camps. The fire dept responds to fires in those camps daily.

While there has been a rise in violent crime in the last few years, which is bad, Seattle is still less violent than it was historically. Right now, we're at approximately 2006 levels of violent crime: https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/wa/seattle/crime-rate-... so while its not good, its vastly oess apocalyptic than folks seem to portray.

I lived in Seattle in 2006, and it seemed a very safe city to me then!

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#409

Post by wolverine876 »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #364
wolverine876 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone with kids and living in the Midwest, I just don't even have the words to describe my reaction to this. Wow. I'm not sure what you mean: Do you live in a large Midwestern city, like Chicago, and have different experiences? Do you live in a suburban or rural environment and are surprised to hear it? Personally I spend lots of time in cities and I'm not surprised. If you don't have experience there, realize…

Houston/Harris county is solidly blue

Right, but the focus is on cities in blue states.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#410

Post by [deleted] »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #375
jandrese wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong suspicion that "Cindy and Fred" are in fact minorities and this is just plain vanilla southern racism at play. This is the state terrorizing minority communities to remind them who is in charge. That's usually what is going on when you see gross miscarriages of justice like this in the south.

southern racism in maryland?

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