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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

#471

Post by kjkjadksj »

quantified wrote: post #277
kjkjadksj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People had no choice. When they come out with a new generation of car model they stop producing the old.

There are lots of smaller vehicles than those.

I'm not talking going to a different class car I'm talking when the given model inflates in size with a new generation. Some people still drive trucks from the 70s and 80s in california. They are remarkably tiny compared to trucks today, like a 1970s F150 seems smaller than a modern light truck like a tacoma, definitely lifted a lot less too based on a couple examples I've seen I assume to be relatively stock specs given the similarity.

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

#472

Post by kjkjadksj »

gnz11 wrote: post #272
ponector wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No choice? They can get Camry. Or van. Or wagon. Yet massive trucks have higher demand than ever.

There are not many van or wagon options left in the US anymore. It’s really just sedan, truck or SUV at this point. In Europe you have all kinds of vans and wagons for sale.

I grew up with people having vans or wagons instead of SUVs as well. It seemed like that went on even until 2008 screwed up most automakers lineups. It's hard to rule chicken or egg here: demand drying up or options drying up and therefore demand having nowhere to go but suvs and such. Seems to me its pretty obvious that options dried up before demand considering its hard to imagine selling 0 cars of a given model. Then once you go to say 10 different models of cars down to 3 or 4, what do you know, those 3 or 4 are selling more than ever for lack of other choice. Further justifying the decision to pare down the lineup. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at a certain point.

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

#473

Post by SkyPuncher »

eru wrote: post #457
umvi wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SUVs get a special carve-out, and the law mandates less fuel efficiency for them than for regular cars (or what used to be regular cars). Even wonder why station wagons fell out of favour in the US?

Given that most small crossovers are labeled as “wagons”, I don’t think your theory holds much weight

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

#474

Post by Shocka1 »

jajko wrote: post #355
nottorp wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once saw a F-150. It needed 3 parking spots at my eastern european local mall :) And I don't mean the driver was an asshole, it simply wouldn't have fit in otherwise.

My favorite answer from soccer moms when I ask them why they drive their huge (by US standard tiny to normal) SUVs just around the city: 'I see better from up there and I feel safer in big car'. So, bad driving skills and realizing it via lack of self-trust, being compensated with degradation of roads and parking for everybody else, or just throwing money at the problem (without fixing underlying issue, but feeling l…

After that get them off their phones please. Good luck.

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

#475

Post by Shocka1 »

Fezzik wrote: post #138
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…

This is one reason I am grateful for having grown up in an apartment complex - I had ready access to loads of kids around my age, a field for baseball and football games, a cement area for wall-ball and four-square, and secret places to just be alone and enjoy the outdoors. From my first conscious memories to when I moved out after high-school I could walk out my front-door at any reasonable hour and I would bump int…

So I had the exact opposite experience growing up in a very rural area and take no offense to your statement. I had access to hundreds of acres of woods/farms growing up, which for a young kid was total freedom. Around 10 or 11 I was taking care of varmints for local farmers with a rifle that was given to me, which might seem crazy to the average parent now (including me). Of course friends weren't knocking on my door every 5 minutes, but we all saw each other at sports/school/weekends and the occasional birthday party. And once my friends and I started getting older it was a lot of outdoor powersport type stuff, or going to the local swimming hole or hangout together. It was a completely different world than the city/suburb life.

I've never felt it hindered me at all, except for a longing at times to live rurally. I've worked in different countries around a wide array of people in tech, both in project management and software engineering roles. My kids now have the same experience as you - they can walk outside at any given moment and have someone to play with in our subdivision, and they seem to really like it. But of course we are constantly going back to where I grew up to land my family owns, hunting, riding 4 wheelers, etc...

I think it's probably dependent on the person, but balance always seems like a good starting point.

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

#476

Post by Aerbil313 »

downrightmike wrote: post #40

Moral panic, people said the same thing about books, newspapers, radio etc. People like things and get into them, that is normal. Before all this is was just farm work. To quote a meme "The children yearn for the mines"

Every single time Haidt posts something someone surely screams here: "But people said the same thing about books too!". Since I couldn't find the comments from the past thread, let me scream the usual reply: And they were right. Books, newspapers, radio, television, smartphones. All of them weakened the social bonds between people, gradually moving us away from the way of living which we were biologically designed for. The social bonds are instead got replaced by bonds with institutions and technological gadgets. But they are exactly like junk food: They appear to satisfy the desire, but are never a substitute, and always lack the critical nutrients we need.

For replies going to accuse me of intellectual hypocrisy: I do believe all technology is evil. You can accuse me of practical hypocrisy instead, since I'm a software dev.

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

#477

Post by Aerbil313 »

feedforward wrote: post #403
blendo wrote: post #142

“Social scientists have shown — for as long as we have been collecting data — that conservatives have better mental health than liberals, and religious people have better mental health than their secular peers.” My gut tells me social scientists have “shown” no such thing, but am open to hearing the case.

Obviously people who believe people can magically turn water into wine, or that virgins give birth, or that they can walk on water etc. have better "mental health" than those who are skeptical of all of this.

Obviously the studies doesn't define religion as mental illness. You might want to spread your hate elsewhere, as per the site guidelines[1].

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#478

Post by woleium »

eru wrote: post #457
umvi wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SUVs get a special carve-out, and the law mandates less fuel efficiency for them than for regular cars (or what used to be regular cars). Even wonder why station wagons fell out of favour in the US?

not so much gets, they were designed specifically to exploit a loophole

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

#479

Post by [deleted] »

bedobi wrote: post #393
constantcrying wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never entered the US, but have been to many of the larger European cities. None of them came close to what Americans on /r/fuckcars are fantasizing about, when they talk about Europe. If they post pictures it is almost always of the few square kilometers of the city where millionaires and shops for millionaires are located. The rest of the city is full of streets and cars are everywhere. The one difference is…

It's true all of Europe doesn't look like that, but the difference is real and shouldn't be underestimated. Even in most European single family home suburbs, you can usually walk, bike or transit to nearby schools, supermarket, the odd cafe and restaurant. Ie what's being said isn't that Europe is devoid of cars, it's that it isn't exclusively designed for cars to the point where you cannot exist without one. In a hu…

[deleted]

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

#480

Post by acjohnson55 »

naasking wrote: post #436
acjohnson55 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's only one piece of the puzzle. As they say, the 3 E's of traffic safety are engineering, enforcement and education. The engineering of my town and surrounding area puts us in a really tough starting point. But I do agree that greater enforcement would help.

I used to hate the idea of automated red light cameras, but I've come around to thinking they're better than not having them. Also, cameras for people not stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks.

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