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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#411

Post by lupusreal »

bedobi wrote: post #406
lupusreal wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children, even teenagers, account for a very small portion of pedestrian deaths. Arguably this is because they're kept indoors, but the 20-25 age bracket is the second least likely to die as a pedestrian, despite being young and (stereotypically) dumb and reckless at that age. On the other hand, 25-35 are the most likely to get hit. Some other interesting statistics: 25% of pedestrians killed were drunk, while only 1…

this is victim blaming IMO. people get drunk. people go out at night. people cross streets. if the physical environment doesn't take the above into account, to the point where there are countless needless and preventable deaths, the correct thing to do is to fix the environment, not say people should have been more careful.

Victim blaming? I'm explaining that children are at less risk than the crude statistic would suggest. I think maybe you're mad about that because it undermines your intent to radically restructure society with this child pedestrian safety pretext.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#412

Post by lupusreal »

randomdata wrote: post #405
lupusreal wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs are usually grafted onto towns (and within a few minutes of stores), not in the middle of nowhere. That would just be bizarre.

> Suburbs are usually [...] would just be bizarre. Usually, yes, but I know of settlements "out in the middle of nowhere" that are nothing but rows of houses. No businesses, schools, or anything of that sort found within the immediate community. One needs to drive through the vast corn fields to another town to access such amenities. It doesn't seem that bizarre. > (and within a few minutes of stores) For those at th…

Suburbs surely do have crazy road systems, all meandering and looping back into themselves instead of connecting to the rest of the world. But you are greatly exaggerating how much this adds to trip times, I've never seen nor heard of cases where it might take 30 minutes to escape and reach a store. If you have any specific examples in mind, I'd love to gawk at them.

Personally I just hate the aesthetic of suburbs, so I'll never live in one, but I think some people in this thread are getting a bit hyperbolic about how inconvenient they are. The suburb in my town takes no more than five minutes to drive across and is directly adjacent to the grocery store. From what I've seen this is typical. The worst I've seen are those in the DC metro area, but even then they have stores all over the place. The real pain in the ass in that region is needing to use/cross multilane roads to get anywhere.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#413

Post by randomdata »

lupusreal wrote: post #412
randomdata wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suburbs are usually [...] would just be bizarre. Usually, yes, but I know of settlements "out in the middle of nowhere" that are nothing but rows of houses. No businesses, schools, or anything of that sort found within the immediate community. One needs to drive through the vast corn fields to another town to access such amenities. It doesn't seem that bizarre. > (and within a few minutes of stores) For those at th…

Suburbs surely do have crazy road systems, all meandering and looping back into themselves instead of connecting to the rest of the world. But you are greatly exaggerating how much this adds to trip times, I've never seen nor heard of cases where it might take 30 minutes to escape and reach a store. If you have any specific examples in mind, I'd love to gawk at them. Personally I just hate the aesthetic of suburbs, s…

> I've never seen nor heard of cases where it might take 30 minutes to escape and reach a store.

Well, me neither. I grew up on a production farm with actual rows of corn as far as the eye can seen – in what I am quite sure everyone would agree was decidedly rural – and there were still several different towns with stores within a 5-10 minute driving radius.

> I think some people in this thread are getting a bit hyperbolic about how inconvenient they are.

No doubt, but that doesn't really have much to do with the conversation. The conversation is about what we call the places that are just rows upon rows of housing without a shared and vibrant mixture of businesses, hospitals, schools, etc. They're not exactly rural, there are too many people living there to be considered rural, but they aren't like towns or cities either. They are more like rural than anything else.

Suburb seems to be the prevailing term.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#414

Post by erikw »

Levitz wrote: post #402
erikw wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can legally sell a new small vehicle in the US, so the root cause is legislation that prevents this. I believe that if you could legally produce kei sized vehicles in the US, there would be a massive market for it, especially in urban environments. And I'm sure US manufacturers would be happy to sell them to all comers. Edit: Basically any car from Suzuki would be a hit in the US: https://www.suzuki…

Are small cars in any way illegal or something?

Yes, regulation in the US requires that vehicles be able to protect their occupants in pretty extreme crashes. Part of that requires a crumple zone, which means you can't fit many people inside a small car. For example, the Smart Fortwo is small, but only sits two people, while a kei vehicle of the same size would seat 4-5. I don't see much of a market for a 2-seater car.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#415

Post by [deleted] »

dangus wrote: post #350
bcrosby95 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common thought on this but I grew up and have lived in mostly California suburbs and it's pretty easy to be within biking distance to things (1-2 miles). People talk about the dangerous cars but they were there 40 years ago and my friends and I would bike to school, the mall, or into the hills surrounding us. My 9 year old's friend lives just two blocks from us and her parents don't let her walk here alone.…

I don't know if you realize how much the built enviornment has been changed in 40 years. Some of those roads you biked on have probably been widened. Cars have gotten faster, larger, and heavier. Speed limits have increased. I'm not saying it's guaranteed to be dramatically different but I think there probably is some kind of difference. Just look at the pedestrian deaths chart for the past 5-10 years or so.

[deleted]

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#416

Post by bcrosby95 »

uoaei wrote: post #343
bcrosby95 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common thought on this but I grew up and have lived in mostly California suburbs and it's pretty easy to be within biking distance to things (1-2 miles). People talk about the dangerous cars but they were there 40 years ago and my friends and I would bike to school, the mall, or into the hills surrounding us. My 9 year old's friend lives just two blocks from us and her parents don't let her walk here alone.…

This experience is so far from being accessible to a typical resident of the US, what exactly are your motivations for framing it as " shrug there's no issue with urban planning"?

My experience is consistent with what I've seen in two major US metros: LA and the SF bay area. I never called them great urban planning but hyperbole does nothing to convince people something needs to be done - it just makes you out as someone to ignore because there's already more legitimate arguments vying for our attention than we could address in a lifetime.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#417

Post by godelski »

ruined wrote: post #337
lukan wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"along with those super bright headlamps that ruin your night vision when they're equipped on an oncoming vehicle." I hate them. I dream of the day, when proper night vision gear with the result displayed to the front window will be standard in cars, so all the cars can have no, or very soft lights to drive around savely at night. Also, why not heat vision to better spot humans (and animals)? For the AI as well as th…

photonic intensifiers are ITAR controlled, but china has started manufacturing gen2 equivalents recently. digital is controlled but more widely made, but also barely worth it. the real issue is how to display it. for head-mounted setups it's essentially full field of view, and in monocular use combination is subconscious, but it's still rather awkward and requires practice. you can't achieve the same effect on a wind…

This made me interested and I found a small showcase of HUDs in cars from the 1950's-1990's

https://hudway.co/blog/history-of-automotive-heads-up-displa...

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#418

Post by immibis »

eru wrote: post #241
immibis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't no longer safe for kids to walk to school. What happened is that American internet arrived here, and it has political reasons to want everyone to think it is.

Wait, are you saying American internet it telling people that it's safe, or that it's unsafe?

American internet wants you to think you can only be safe in a car, with a gun, around other white cis people.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#419

Post by pantalaimon »

monkeyfun wrote: post #369
pantalaimon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a case recently where a little girl was crushed by a SUV making a right turn at a pedestrian crossing. She was walking right behind her parents, but the driver could not see her because the vehicle was too high, so thought the road was free when the parents had passed through. The court decided that the driver was at no fault as it was impossible to see the girl from his position.

Can you link to an article or source on that story? I can't seem to find it, just irrelevant ones about near-misses or not involving right turns etc.

https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-pfalz/mainz/ermittlu...

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#420

Post by vanviegen »

Dalewyn wrote: post #192
nox101 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lived in Japan 20 years and still spend ~2 months a year there including last month. Never experienced any of this except "most roads are very narrow" which is only semi-true. It's true many small roads are, um, small. But there are plenty of big roads as well. I've never seen dedicated police supervision. I have seen directors around road construction. That's no different than in the states.

Here's some more detail concerning pedestrians crossing intersections that I mentioned earlier. In America, it is literally against the law to enter an intersection unless you can completely cross it without stopping. That means if a pedestrian is crossing, you wait outside of the intersection for them to finish crossing first. In Japan? With pedestrians crossing? You enter the intersection and hopefully you stop inc…

Waiting on the middle of the intersection sounds perfectly normal to me as a European as well. It's not to save the few seconds of getting there, but to claim your slot on the intersection from cross traffic. And of course you don't speed up till the crosswalk.
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