Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

The country is a hell of a lot older than the automobile, and much development occurred before it. It's spread out in general because we had a lot of land compared to the number of people who were rapidly settling it.

> it could have developed differently, only high density urban centers where you don't need cars and large swaths of empty in between.

Not everyone wants to live in an urban center. I would be chronically depressed in such an environment.

> new york, dc and a few others that i am not familiar with, but contrast with san diego and los angeles

These are all huge cities --- metropolises --- (okay, DC is a bit of a weird one) and while they have large populations, I cannot consider them representative of the U.S. overall.

> the area i am talking about was one of those bedroom communities outside of D.C. probably the worst example.

Absolutely; this is not representative of the U.S.

> they are not using them to go to school, or to the movies or for errands, because they can't

Because they don't want to. This used to be different. Some decades past, it was not unusual to bike a few miles (say, less than 10) to get where you wanted to go. It was also not considered unreasonable to walk a few miles to school everyday, often over terrain that I see people in this thread calling "unwalkable". Society changed.

When I didn't have a license for several years, I biked everywhere. My maximum range for a day trip was about 35 miles. I don't do that anymore; it's just far more convenient to do that sort of thing in a car, especially, you know, when there's a foot of snow on the ground. But the way I see it, you do what you have to do.

> cars absolutely are the issue because not every youth can afford them

Yes, but in general, that means you borrow your parents' car, and save for something cheap. Something you repair and maintain yourself if you need to. Used auto prices got kind of crazy since the pandemic, but my experience growing up with decidedly non-wealthy families, is that people found a way.

One thing that is a real issue financially, is the insane premiums on mandatory auto insurance in some areas, notably New York state.

> They also don’t deliver them in a car, they deliver them in a refrigerated small truck which makes multiple deliveries to the same street/area in one trip. Often a few to the same building as me.

Ah, interesting. Very different from my area. Where do you live, roughly speaking? If you don't mind.

that, and many people came to america to start a new life away from the oppressive landlords in europe. many were also poor, meaning that they had to provide for themselves, which is easier if you have land to grow your own food. so quite naturally people favored to be away from the cities.

but modern suburbs are not that. i can understand living in the city where the jobs are or out in the country where you grow your own food. suburbs have neither of that.

i grew up in cities and on farms growing crops and herding cows. when i lived in american suburbs i found those depressing. i have been to a few places, and while DC bedroom communities may be the worst, suburbs elsewhere were not much better. it doesn't help that in movies you see much of the same. so if those suburbs are not representative, then what is?

How can you get something right about any Italian law?

Sure they correctly cited what has been defined by the law but that doesn't mean jackshit in practice.

Once a law is written, it can change substantially once it gets put into practice, by the many and many little details.

In theory the parents "authorize" their kids to exit the school alone.

In practice, individual schools can decide whethers that's reasonable or not. The criteria for what's reasonable or not begin with reasonable stuff like "it must be safe", "the child must be mature enough", "the child must walk on your sidewalk", "the child must know the rules of the road" ....

But then after a while most schools just ended up with blanket rules like "possible starting from the 5th grade" (since only those kids are generally old enough to meet all the other criteria; so even if your kid meets them before, tough luck).

And some schools don't even allow that. Basically you have to fight for your right, which usually requires you to band with other parents otherwise you have no chances winning.

But once you band with enough parents, there is a simpler solution which requires no fighting: you just add a bunch of other parents to the list of trusted people, and so a group of kids exits with one adult supervision and they usually just walk together to their respective homes, possibly letting the kids to leave the group once closer to home (sometimes called "piedibus")

So yeah, in practice people get more or less what they want, but oh boy how different this is in practice than what you'd read in the newspapers.