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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#101

Post by hibikir »

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair.

When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places to sit everywhere, things to see, other people walking too. He could even go to the beach and be fine, as there's lifeguards. By the second week of the summer, you'd see group of new friends hanging out with no parents, just going back home for meals and sleep.

Build environments where children can be independent, and they might even want to be. But it's amazing how much modern-ish suburbia just has no place for you to even exist without a car.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#102

Post by rootusrootus »

helterskelter wrote: post #40
alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

As far as visibility is concerned, the only problems I've encountered in a big truck are to do with the driver-side A-pillar obscuring pedestrians about to cross the street on the other side of an intersection. It's the perfect width, and in just the right spot that I've had to stop in the middle of an intersection a few times now because I didn't see somebody as they just started to cross. I'm building the habit of…

Agreed. I have a model 3 and a Lightning, and I’ve had more visibility issues on the model 3. Height is never the issue, it’s the ginormous A-pillars modern cars have.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#103

Post by doctorpangloss »

coryrc wrote: post #100
alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

I'm lobbying my city to make it safer to walk to school. But Traffic Engineers care only about the 85 percentile speed of car drivers and not equity in movement. Non-car users are not important in the United States to the only role cities have for managing road design. "Safe Routes to School" are programs in the US and there's one here in Washington; Seattle has their own partial adoption of this, and I'm hoping to l…

> But Traffic Engineers care only about the 85 percentile speed of car drivers and not equity in movement.

i don't know how true this is. residents care about the speed of cars. the trend in government is more holistic public land allocation (ie street design) in almost all growing communities.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#104

Post by thaumasiotes »

iamalizard wrote: post #28
jszymborski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand how being scared/traumatized by videos of bike accidents will increase that child's visibility. The onus here is on municipal and federal governments to make roads and cars safer.

It won't increase their visibility, obviously. It will make them think twice before going on that crosswalk. Maybe they'll wait for a car that slows down after they've taken only 1 step on the crosswalk, maybe they'll wait for their eyes to meet the driver's or to see the driver making a "go, go" sign with their hand. Governments should make roads safer but until they do, we should care for ourselves. Imagine a sidew…

> It won't increase their visibility, obviously. It will make them think twice before going on that crosswalk.

Meanwhile in Shanghai, it tends to be a little too difficult to cross an entire street at once, so the way you cross is lane by lane, as if you were playing Frogger. (Except that you'll rest on lane dividers as opposed to right in the middle of a lane.)

Pedestrians getting run over while doing this is not a noticeable problem.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#105

Post by pfannkuchen »

prawn wrote: post #96
human305893 wrote: post #62

I can think of so many reasons but the biggest I think is the reduction of community. - When I was a kid mums worked part time or not at all. We had school fates and lots more community gatherings. - Dads didn't work as hard. Half of them would be at your soccer practice at 6pm to hang out - Parents were on local sports teams together or other social groups as well - You did most of your shopping at the local shops,…

I say it every time on this topic, but the situation hasn't changed in 10 years so it holds true IMO. I agree, the big change is absolutely cars and street parking. My parents have lived in the same house for 40+ years (South Australia), in an area where every home has a driveway and garage/carport that can fit 2-3 cars combined. When I was young, that block had maybe 1-2 cars parked on the street, visibility was goo…

Is it not more people living per house? I can’t really imagine voluntarily street parking on a busy street to avoid car shuffling. Are there more cars per person now than in the 90s? I feel like parents had one car each back then and teens got cars at around the same rates they do now? But with housing prices going up like crazy everywhere it wouldn’t be surprising to me if there were more people per house than there used to be.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#106

Post by tootie »

Cheetah26 wrote: post #77

For those who grew up in a time and place where you were able to wander without supervision, how far away were your friends? Follow up, how much traveling did you do on your own? For me growing up in 2000's suburbia, the closest kids around my age that I knew of were about one mile and major road crossing away, but to get to a friend it could be a lot more. I think kids out in a group doesn't feel like a safety conce…

I had some friends within half a mile or we'd meet at a park. But in high school, my friends were a few miles away and across a few highways. We needed to drive. Idk if this counts but my parents did let my older brother with a license take me places in his car.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#107

Post by antiframe »

hibikir wrote: post #101

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…

100% this. Every time someone visits me in my city home, they comment on how nice it must be able to walk to school, the ice cream shop, the library, the playground full of other kids who walked or biked there, or just see other people out and about. But, they say, they could never live in the city. It's too dangerous. Cars are dangerous. No sidewalks on 50mph roads are dangerous. Loneliness is dangerous. And yes, there are bad parts of town where the people are dangerous too. But life is full of safety vs. living tradeoffs. We made ours. They made theirs.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#108

Post by philosopherNoob »

iamalizard wrote: post #23
alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

I'm almost 2 meters tall and was crossing a street at a crosswalk with my bike yesterday, walking and pushing it at normal walking speeds, like the law requires. There was a car about to turn left from the lanes going left. There was a car from the lanes going right (the closest lanes to me) that slowed down as I started crossing the street. I assumed they saw me and that's why they were slowing down. Nope - they alm…

Had to jump in here to say: Don’t show children gore videos if you can help it. They’ll remember the horror more than the lesson. All it’ll do is make them calloused (or scared).

If you want something with a gut punch related to car safety, check out British vehicle PSA advertisements. Holy moly are those grim! They’re memorable, focused, and unflinching.

Personally, I’d go with some mini-documentaries or after-the-fact breakdowns put out by local American TV stations. They take it slow, film on location, and try to have a takeaway lesson.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#109

Post by parineum »

alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

> 40 years ago a 5 or 6 year old mostly had to contend with sedans with hoods lower than 30 inches

> Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities.

I'm not sure that height matters for a young kid and, 40 years ago, there weren't abs and sensors that will brake for you. Plus, drunk driving rates were much, much higher and the vehicles were significantly heavier.

I don't have any insight on the answer but I'd be curious if the rates of kids dying as pedestrians/cyclists have gone up (per mile, which would be hard to track down and sway the numbers significantly).

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#110

Post by qingcharles »

porknubbins wrote: post #72
human305893 wrote: post #62

I can think of so many reasons but the biggest I think is the reduction of community. - When I was a kid mums worked part time or not at all. We had school fates and lots more community gatherings. - Dads didn't work as hard. Half of them would be at your soccer practice at 6pm to hang out - Parents were on local sports teams together or other social groups as well - You did most of your shopping at the local shops,…

Where I lived we knew a few neighbors but didn’t really interact every day or feel like they would watch out for other people’s kids. That didn’t stop me from biking and exploring all over from age 6-7, which seems unthinkable now. I think it was mostly just more risk tolerance and less flashy warnings about danger. Like my dad biked around the same block so why not let me and there was not much more thought given to…

From the age of 5 in my town everyone would just let all us kids out to play and we'd just come home when it was getting dark. There were no cell phones. We didn't even have a landline until I was 12. I'd walk the mile or so each way to school. Some days I'd get treated to the bus fare but I usually just spent it on candy and walked home anyway :D
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