121–130 of 303 posts
My biggest fear of letting my young kid play alone outside is getting hit by a car.
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American children are in more danger because the country's more diverse?
It is the difference in culture. In big cities, Japan doesn’t tolerate public deviance. Police are visible in every block. They are very strict about weapons; you can’t bring a knife in public for no reason etc.
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I don't think roads were ever considered a safe area to play. Even in cities in 80 the bugger roads were too busy. This is why cities need spaces for people including youth and teens not just playgrounds for toddlers. Yes traffic is more dense and faster, cars get bigger etc. but aren't cars also safer? I have heard the cars in the USA are crazy big which has larger dead angles particularly bad for smaller humans.
Cars are safer for those inside of them. For those outside of them, well, it's their fault for not having crumple zones! Cars on the roads in the '80s were very low to the ground. Even a child standing on the sidewalk could easily see over the hood of a car parked on the road. Now, hoods have gotten so tall that neither can the child see past it to what's on the other side, nor can the drivers see the children.
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The cars are getting bigger. That means that the impact is more deadly, and the line of sight is higher - making it easy to overlook a child. The sensors often won't react at low speeds which are common for residential neighborhoods, and at high speeds they are late anyway.
> The cars are getting bigger Wasn't there a trend in the US away from pompous SUVs and towards smaller cars, people even starting to re-evaluate some European-favored "city" cars more? Also aren't cars also getting ligther, with less heavy / metallic exterior over time?
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It work on the dirt-bike tier e-bikes because they can get away. IF they are walking my child has been harassed by Karens asking "why they are out on their own." I look forward to the day they are old enough to ride a fast enough e-bike to escape people with cell phones that will rat them out for being out and about. I largely blame cell phones for the Karens being able to impose their will. When I was a kid we were…
We tell children not to talk to strangers but if a random adult goes up to a child and says something like "Why are you out on your own," what are they supposed to do? Thankfully this never happened to me as a child, I don't even know what I'd do.
> “We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” It's disgusting that this has become a casual attitude and admission by the tech worker class. No one should be getting this free pass. "I am actively harming children and society with my livelihood (except my own, because I am so smart). He…
The only differences as far as I can see are in buying- a child could technically buy a phone for themself if they had the money and create an account on Instagram for free, and in cultural recognition of social media as a vice, which I believe is starting to change.
The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people, and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way.
You will see lots of kids free-ranging in Lakewood, NJ. A lot of families there have banned TV from the home.
It's not isolated phenomenon.If we look at the larger scale of, say, 100 years, a lot of things are rapidly disappearing. It's actually some sort of extinction that is underway, but you don't feel it on a smaller scale of time. Similar to how Romans wouldn't have been aware of the Fall of Roman empire while it was happening, because it was too slow to notice.