We live in an HOA-governed community in Central Florida. Our kids play in an alley just cross the road from us with a bunch of other kids from the immediate area. Streets are marked 25mph and everyone knows this community is rife with children. We've still had 2 or 3 near misses in the past 3 years and that's just including the kids within 1 square block from here. It gives me anxiety just thinking about it, but we do our best to warn them of the dangers; get them looking both ways; and put out "Kids at Play" signs to warn drivers.
It reflects that parents (accurately) deduced that roads were too dangerous, and now keep their children from interacting with them as much as possible. Given everything I've read about the hazards of children especially in the face of oversized trucks and SUVs, if anything, kids are more in danger than ever: both from drivers on the public road, and from their own parents being unable to see them around their massive Suburbans. https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger...
Yeah I'm not trusting the completely faulty metric of "parental instincts". Given that more intelligent people breed less, the avg parent isn't as smart as the avg person. And we know how smart the average person is.
Your article is a perfect example of misjudging risk. Roughly 100 kids die in pedestrian accidents per year. Even if those SUVs are doubling the chance of an accident, those SUVs are only a portion of all vehicles on the road, say 10%. 100 kids goes up to 110. It's just noise when you account for all mortalities.
The fact that media deliberately scares people to get attention and therefore make money doesn't negate the fact at all that a modern Chevy Suburban has a 16-foot blind spot underneath it's stupidly large front end, which incidentally is about twice as long as the blind spot in front of a standard LTL semi truck.
Furthermore according to some quick googling, SUVs are between 21% and 29% of the fleet in the United States right now, and pickup trucks which have all the same issues are about 17%. So it's not "say 10%", it's between 38% and 46%. Which certainly lines up with what I see day to day during my time on the road.
And this:
> Given that more intelligent people breed less, the avg parent isn't as smart as the avg person. And we know how smart the average person is.
This is just gross, just all the way around. I'm not a parent and in fact am child-free, but this is offensive even to me. I really hope you're not in a career that requires empathy.
In 1969, 48 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (The National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011).
In 2009, 13 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011).
* In 1969, 41 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 89 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (U.S. Department of Transportation [USDOT], 1972).
* In 2009, 31 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 35 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011).
I wonder what is causing kids to live further from schools. Is it that there are fewer schools, or is it that more kids don't attend the closest school? There is a modern trend towards specialization of schools, or parents selecting one school over another, which would result longer distances. But there is also a trend towards centralization at larger schools.
Land is cheaper in suburban areas, and most decision makers are capable of driving unlike children. Schools in the US have been moving into more auto-oriented, less walkable places, and this also happens when schools get replaced due to reaching the end of their useful lives.
>> Does this reflect safer streets, or just fewer (esp. unsupervised) child pedestrians?
Probably both. The streets are probably "safer" because there are fewer pedestrians-car interactions. We now have walking trails and such separate from roads. And driving kids around in vehicles might be bad environmentally, but if we are talking about traffic deaths then it is a legitimate tool (ie busses rather than kids walking to school).
I suspect much of it is simply that kids no longer wander around on roads. They spend less time outside and when they do it isn't near roads. But the numbers between the 1970s and 2020s are so dramatic that one must conclude that roads are generally safer places for everyone today.
Does this reflect safer streets, or just fewer (esp. unsupervised) child pedestrians?