I looked at the author’s Google map view of the 2 miles they couldn’t walk to school, and the enormous grassed area next to the road would have meant I’d be walking that quite happily in the UK.
During nice weather, surely, but it might be very unpleasant when raining.
When I hear these stories about how children in USA go to school, I am always astonished.
In Europe, my parents took me to the school one single time, for the first school day, when I was 6 years old. Everyday after that I have gone there and come back alone, for a walk of about one mile and a half. Several years later, I continued my studies at a more distant school, to which I was going alone using the public transportation of the city, by bus, the same as most of my colleagues.
Even during the 1st grade (i.e. at 6 to 7 years old) any child would have considered very shameful to be brought to the school by their parents, as an indication that they would have been somehow helpless or handicapped.
Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) but that country road with ample green space left and right? It's fine. Would benefit from sidewalks and bike lane of course, but the author makes it sound like there is a steep cliff left and right of the road.
> Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective)
As children in such a situation, we would have a lot of fun as pedestrians to be a nuisance to the cars that drive on the road, too. :-) Having this perspective, I rather think that the reason why sidewalks are built is because of the complaints of car drivers.
As someone who has done a bunch of long distance walks in the UK, I’ve encountered any number of relatively rural or small town roads with no shoulders along walls or hedgerows that are at least as scary as a pedestrian as anything I’ve encountered in the US.
It's not very safe if you can't get off a curvy road with no shoulder, especially in poor visibility. You're probably OK as a bet as a sometimes thing but not something I'd, have especially a kid, do on a daily basis. One reason I didn't learn to ride a bike as a kid because that basically described the road our house was on and fatalities associated with kids riding bikes wasn't rare.
Yeah, "I didn't die taking a jump in a wingsuit" isn't actually a recommendation that's a safe thing to do. Or, hey, plenty of people survived climbing K2.
See here, and deer were hit regularly on the 4m road I walked... but even as a kid I recognised it was kind of dangerous, and I wouldn't want my own kids to do the same.
School?!? Well fiddledeedee which luxury part of Yorkshire are you from?
When I were a lad I used to walk sixteen miles just for a kick up the arse and then have to walk home again to work under t’spinning machine at t’mill for the other 14 hours of the day.
You don't need a pickup truck to be on the phone! It's truly shocking to see just how many (usually speeding!) drivers are on their phones on the highway and elsewhere.
Rural property owners in the US are somewhat likely to shoot first and ask questions about trespassers only later. In some parts of the country the Road is the only obviously public land. (Even that can't be taken for granted sometimes, as private streets exist in some areas, too.)
No they are not. That is what happens in the movies, but in reality those people are just like anyone else - mostly nice people. Even stand your ground laws which allow you to shoot without asking questions only apply in specific situations and are unlikely to apply (though without specific details I cannot say for sure)
Sure, small numbers, low statistics, but it is still in the list of reasons why "Americans don't trust cutting through a random field and see only a dangerous road in a picture like that street view" in some parts of the country. The US has a fascinating relationship to "private property".
It varies from state to state. See "Castle Doctrine" and its variants, including the worst "Stand Your Ground" ones. The US has more pockets of dystopia than are necessarily obvious.
