it wasn't just safetyism.....it was city planners ....density with no parks and greenspace....terrible design to favour numbers over happiness.....that was far more damaging....
Safetyism killed playtime
141–150 of 154 posts
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#142I 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 specifi…
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.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you chose a house on a dead-end street but also are still afraid to let your children play outside?
I let them do it much more than I used to; closer to normal than zero as it used to be.
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.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
the boo boos are fine, but what about medical costs? Thats a component that I hear nobody talk about with safetyism. Can you imagine what a $15-20k bill for a broken arm (ambulance, ER, surgery, medication, follow-up visits) does to a middle or lower-class family? This a major factor to why people sue, because they can't afford these kinds of boo-boos.
Average out-of-pocket cost for a broken bone is $2,500. Certainly not nothing, but kids don't break a bone every month or probably even every year, so it doesn't seem like too wild of a number in the long run. You can extrapolate this further. Why would I allow my 15 year old to start driving? What if she gets into a car accident, and I have to... shudder ... pay her medical bills? I think the potential monetary liab…
> Average out-of-pocket cost for a broken bone is $2,500.
44% of Americans cannot afford to even pay a $1,000 emergency expense[1]. $2,500 would crush most people.
> Why would I allow my 15 year old to start driving? What if she gets into a car accident, and I have to... shudder... pay her medical bills?
Um... this is actually a calculation many people seriously do. The potential cost of devastating medical bills absolutely plays into the risk assessment of everything we do in America.
1: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/many-americans-cannot-pay-fo...
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#145I 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 specifi…
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.
How do you track them down if they're not neighbors?
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#146I 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 specifi…
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 stick…
Gah! That sounds terrifying and infuriating.
It's not so scary here; mostly 20-somethings with no life beyond "car culture", AFAICT.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really true. There are various causes being debated but we’re the only rich country where the fatality rate is moving in the wrong direction: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/12/10/briefing/oakImage... The source article covers why some of the theories can’t explain the difference on their own: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/briefing/us-traffic-death...
I can't read your pay walled article. "It is really true. There are various causes being debated but we’re the only rich country where the fatality rate is moving in the wrong direction:" I'm not sure we're on the same page with what I'm taking issue with. The requirements to get a license are a joke in the US. The other nations with lower fatalities have stricter licensing. Yes, it won't explain it on it's own, but…
The graph is not paywalled, and that’s really most of it. You can use IA for the rest:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231211115919/https://www.nytim...
The general point, however, is simple: neither the US nor our peer countries significantly changed licensing requirements in the last 10-20 years. We didn’t suddenly stop doing public safety campaigns, either, but the United States is the only country where the fatality rate suddenly started going back up. The licensing hypothesis could explain why our numbers are higher in absolute terms but not that stark, sudden increase in legality – even if we made the license exams much easier in the mid-2010s, that wouldn’t affect the majority of drivers who already had their licenses by then.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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.
> If that's the goal is to cause no harm, we can't have cars.
Careful, some people actually want to ban cars.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#149A lot of this has to do with parents' choices. Specifically, choices in where to live and how to raise their kids. It's still plenty possible to enable free, and free-ish playtime in the US, but teaching kids to respect risk has to begin young. I live in a top 10 city -- San Jose -- with crazy commute traffic up and down the peninsula. But we chose to raise our kids on a two block long street with a church at one end…
It might not be as simple as "choosing" to live in a nice neighbourhood.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I let them do it much more than I used to; closer to normal than zero as it used to be.
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.
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.)