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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

#431

Post by pedroma »

Moldoteck wrote: post #215
pedroma wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it makes sense to compare deaths by cars to deaths by dangerous drug addicts for the same reason it doesn't make sense to compare death by cars to death by molestation.

we are talking about dangers for kids. How many kids were killed+mutilated+lifetime injuries by cars vs drug addicts(deaths+other impacts)? I didn't add the consequences from heavy pollution, but you can add them too in the second step if you want

My point is it's not useful to compare metrics of these unrelated things, where one is deadly and the other is simply undesirable but non-deadly. Because then someone with bad intentions can make the argument, like "wow drug addicts and molesters aren't so bad! the numbers of deaths are so low compared to cars so we should focus on fixing cars instead of drug addicts and molesters!". The issue with things like drug addicts and molestation aren't death but exposure to them is still mentally and physically harmful to kids.

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

#432

Post by hellojesus »

scruple wrote: post #373
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…

I don't really agree anymore. These massive vehicles on the road means that suddenly everyone has developed a very real intuition for F=ma and they're all competing in a sort of arms race to survive car crashes. Wanna improve your odds of surviving? Get the biggest fucking thing you can.

This was actually my father's arguement when I turned 16. He hypothesized that I was a new driver and therefore more likely to be involved in a crash, but if I wanted to survive a crash I needed a larger vehicle than the other one involved in the collision.

I didn't much care either way, but I do still consider this when comparing new vehicles.

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

#433

Post by hellojesus »

umvi wrote: post #361
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…

I thought it was just that you get hit with fines if your vehicle doesn't have a minimum mpg fuel efficiency and it's hard to make smaller trucks and SUVs with enough efficiency to avoid the fines

The issue was the Chicken Tax which made foreign competition uncompetitive and boxed the market off so that American companies could ignore it.

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

#434

Post by swayvil »

DonHopkins wrote: post #219
swayvil wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "lol" really appropriate in this context? Theses days it seems more like a nervous tic.

"Lucifer Our Lord"

A weird coincidence. In my search for sane discord servers I just happened upon one for satanists last night.

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

#435

Post by rawgabbit »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #171
bilbo0s wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I can tell you video games and smart phones have a lot to do with this.

I think there is some generalizing here I grew up in an Australian City in the 90's. Even back then kids weren't clamoring to play outside in the street. Or ride bikes etc (there was a clique at school who were skateboarders but not a widespread thing). I think it very much depends on the kids temperament, my experience as a kid didn't involve a lot of outdoors activities. However my parents were pretty big on making…

In Texas, sports is bigger than religion. I personally know families that would drive out of state every weekend so their children can participate in weekend soccer/basketball tournaments. This meant 5+ hours in the car each way.

Personally, I believe the loss of trust in institutions (major sex scandals in every church, Boy Scouts of America etc.) made parents uneasy about sending their kids somewhere without one of them as a chaperone.

Here in Texas, I also did not trust many of the volunteer coaches. Many of them simply did not know how dangerous heat stroke was. There was also this bizarre old school theory that you shouldn't drink water when exercising in the heat. Instead, they repeat old stories like this...

https://www.espn.com/classic/s/dent_junction_08/02/01.html Out along the edge of the Texas Hill Country, with temperatures soaring beyond 110 degrees, the Texas A&M Aggies gathered that summer in 1954.... ten days of misery forty-seven years ago when players quit the team in droves to avoid the four-hour practices that did not include water breaks or even a kind word from Bryant. It was a miracle that no one died.

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

#436

Post by naasking »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #319
naasking wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I only wish I felt like it were safe for my kids to explore on foot. Why do you feel it's unsafe?

Because people drive through my town like maniacs, speeding and running traffic lights. There aren't routes for pedestrians and cyclists to get around town without having to cross major streets at unprotected intersections. A lot could be done to improve the bikability and walkability, but the county and state own our major roads, and are historically more concerned with car throughput than pedestrian safety. This ma…

Sounds like the local police should be pushed into enforcing the law. Reckless driving would definitely make cycling or even walking the streets dangerous for everyone, not just kids.

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

#437

Post by tmnvix »

crooked-v wrote: post #80
bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

My particular bugbear here is the absolutely insanity of truck and SUV heights, to the point that even full-grown adults are no longer clearly visible from inside new vehicles ( https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png ).

A quote from a GMC designer:

"I remember wanting it to feel very locomotive - like a massive fist moving through the air"

I suppose it appeals to a kind of selfish stupidity.

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

#438

Post by tonynator »

swayvil wrote: post #85
vsuperpower2020 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

He may or may not have a valid point. But he stated it clearly and politely. And has been censored for it. And that is a bit messed up.

That's HN for you. Reddit but users are given the power to delete comments they don't like (unless you happen to check settings and notice showdead)

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

#439

Post by jjav »

randomdata wrote: post #317
jjav wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in the US and my kids walk and bike to school. You're making wide generalizations across a large country. I've learned from HN discussions that there is a vast difference in what people think of as a "suburb". Some will say it takes over 30 minutes by car from a suburb to the nearest store. To me that's very rural, I'd never consider that a suburb. But some do. So we get these disconnected discussion on how…

> To me that's very rural That's the idea if used in the North American sense. Suburbs are effectively rural areas, except with a higher population density. You will see rows of houses instead of rows of corn, but otherwise no different. > Places with single family homes and parks and playgrounds where I can very easily walk to just about every store or service nearby. What's a town, then?

> What's a town, then?

A town is a collection of suburbs and the parks, amenities and businesses that are intertwined with them.

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

#440

Post by thepasswordis »

Moldoteck wrote: post #372
thepasswordis wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s easy for me to avoid the deaths by cars. If somebody wanted to build a highway directly through my children’s daycare I would think it was just as ridiculous as turning their parks into open air drug markets and homeless shelters.

so you didn't care to provide stats? about 40k ppl are killed by cars per year, about 20k are killed by guns. Among those 40k, about 1200 are kids younger than 14 and about 3k teenagers of age 13-19 (sadly a bit of intersection in stats). Maybe you personally can avoid deaths by cars, but about 40k ppl per year in us alone can't

What is your argument here? We should destroy the parks because cars are also a problem?

No.

We should make cars safer.

We should make guns safer.

But not the parks? Those need to be drug dens and open air homeless shelters?

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