Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

I don't know if you can can say the entire USA has an "obsession" with preventing children from being autonomous based on this one incident. That's too much of a generalization. There are obviously people who do think that way. But there are also a lot who do not, including the mother, who said "I was not panicking as I know the roads and know he is mature enough to walk there without incident."

This situation is ridiculous, of course. But the USA is huge, and you can probably find pretty much any or every attitude and approach to life here.

> With this scale and amount of variety, "one in a million" freak incidents ought to be registered all the time.

I’m not sure “one in a million” and “freak incident” is the right mental model with this case.

What is noteworthy that a whole series of people, most of them professionals, thought an unatended child walking is noteworthy and they should do something about it. The busybody who thought they should report it, then the sherif who thought they should respond to that report then further thought they should do something about it and then further thought to go back and arrest the parrent, then the other officer who didn’t say “hey what are you doing, are you ok?”, then the child protection services who recommended the tracking app, and then the prosecutor who provides the legal muscle to back this insanity.

Yes it might be a one in a million freak event that all these people assembled themselves into a conga line of crazyness. But they had these beliefs even before the boy started walking. How many others have similar ideas to them? You think these 5 are the only ones?

> A woman who saw him walking alongside the road—speed limit: 25 in some places, 35 in others—asked him if he was OK. He said yes.

> Nevertheless, she called the police.

Yeah, but which road was this?

From Street View for Mineral Bluff, Ga:

1. Murphy Highway-- no sidewalks, a lot of parts with no shoulder whatsoever, no protection for a walker even on parts with small shoulder

2. Mineral Bluff Highway-- somehow even less shoulder than Murphy Highway. I see a guardrail that would force a pedestrian to walk about a foot away from traffic

3. Railroad Road-- I'd guessing this road has lower volume traffic. But it's still extremely hostile to pedestrians-- only shoulder is either deep grass or a large ditch that's unwalkable. So the kid would have been forced to walk directly in the road for most of this

#1 and #2, woman absolutely did the right thing calling police.

#3? If low volume, meh. Still dangerous, though.

> the reality is that the rate of child accidental deaths has steadily decreases over the past few decades as parents (and society) became more protective

While accidental deaths are down, I wouldn’t be so quick to conclude this is because of parents/ becoming more protective so much as society collectively implementing regulations and safety standards that target specific things that are known to be highly dangerous. The list of these targeted changes is extremely long, but some top mentions:

- Safer car and booster seats. Cribs, toys, and other household items.

- Advances in healthcare and access to vaccinations.

- Better education for caregivers around drowning prevention, safe sleeping practices, etc.

- Childproofed products like wall outlets, cabinet locks, baby gates, etc.

- Stricter rules and education on smoke and carbon monoxide detection.

- Road safety initiatives ranging from seatbelt and child restraints laws to anti-DUI programs.

- Improved consumer protections and communication of product recalls.

And the list goes on.

Does anybody else get a feeling that this is fake? Reason is the only source (other news outlets just link to this article), there is no comment from the DA or the sheriff nor any documents or mention of official documentation that could corroborate the story. And the GoFundMe has very little info