Hacker News Reader

Comment by freyir | Hacker News Reader

As a counterexample, my parents traveled alone as children in the U.S. in the 40s and 50s; it was more common then. But they both grew up to be risk-averse adults anyway. And maybe you would have been a brave adult regardless?

As a parent, you're often forced to weigh a high probability of nothing bad happening vs. a very small probability of something terrible happening. But putting your kids on a bus or dropping them off at school isn't likely to scar them for life.

View on HN

And then in New York we get stories of a kid being abducted on a 2-block walk from school.

I guess in my family the thought is: Listen, 99% of the time everything will be mostly okay, but that 1 time when your kid gets abducted or ran over is that 1 time when it doesn't matter how safe the other 99 times were.

Also in New York I can't count the number of times drivers almost hit me, or hit my friends while 100% in the wrong. The drivers here are insane.

it's much lower than 1% unsafe or the average kid going to school alone would get kidnapped three and a half times a year :p

0.99^365.25 = 0.0254, so a kid going out alone every day would have a 2.54% chance of surviving the year without being abducted or run over by a car.

you guys are calculating different numbers. you just calculated the chances based on the assumption that 1/100 children will be abducted each year. Whereas the other poster was saying the average child will get abducted once in every 100 days

This sub-thread is an exercise in showing how absurd the 1% chance of getting abducted (on a given day) would be. Don't take it too seriously. That said, you're wrong, and nobody is ever allowed to be wrong on the internet. I will now proceed to correct you.

> 99% of the time everything will be okay

I took this as meaning that 99/100 trips are without incident. I then assumed that a kid might take a trip every day. The probability of taking consecutive 365.25 trips without accident are then 0.99^365.25 (odds of surviving the first trip times odds of surviving the second trip and so on...). This works out to 0.025, or 2.5%.

So, what I calculated is the probability that a kid will avoid accident in a year, given that only 99/100 days are without accident.

The takeaway is that a kids chances of getting abducted on a given day are much, much smaller than 1%.

He's wasn't trying to contradict me. The things we say can be (and are) both true at the same time. I took the approximate average of a 365 tries binomial of 1%, and he computed the probability distribution function of this same binomial for X=0.

yep the average of a 365 tries binomial with 0.01 chance is 3.65 and the value of the pdf for X=0 is 0.0254

Yes, we do get stories about a NYC kid being abducted on a 2-block walk from school. Specifically, one kid being abducted, in 1979.

Getting hit by a car is a real risk worth accounting for. Getting abducted on the way to school isn't.

There are also stories about adults getting kidnapped 2 blocks from home. People still leave the house.

> Getting abducted on the way to school isn't.

I’m not so sure about that. I live in an affluent part of WA where there’s close to zero crime. A couple times a year we get emails from the school district with descriptions of cars and people that approached kids on their way to or the school, trying to get the kids into their cars. An actual abduction has never occurred in the 5 years that I’ve lived here, but clearly there are attempts.

Are abductions rare because they almost never happen in the first place, or because Americans take extreme measures to avoid them?

Aren't the extreme measures a recent thing, like the last 10 or 20 years?

I don't remember being Molly cuddled like today's kids and I'm in my late 30s (UK).

molly-coddled

Molly cuddling does sound cuter, though.

Even before helicopter parenting was a thing in America (and this continues to hold today), the vast vast vast majority of abductions happen by a relative of the child. Abductions are already very rare, but of those that happen only 3.1% are by a stranger[1].

[1] https://www.seeker.com/child-abductions-by-strangers-very-ra...

Do you plan your life around the dinosaur-ending asteroid? :)

I walked from home to elementary school daily ~3 miles in Queens growing up in the late 80’s. I was almost robbed once, but I was luckily able to avoid harm. Otherwise it was a totally uneventful experience. My nephew did get hit and injured (minor) by a car in Manhattan on the way to school (hit and run driver), so I guess that risk is real.

I am currently traveling in Xiamen, Fujian, China.

I feel very safe here walking at all hours of the day and night. In fact everyone feels safe here. Women can walk home any time of day and feel safe. Children and young adults as well. In my time here, and I stick out being white, nobody has tried to do any harm to me or anything related.

I am starting to think that the almost getting hit is a product of being to busy and always in a hurry. I am walking about 5 miles each day. The cars here are also insane, worse than NYC (I live close to NYC). The culture here is to hurry , get something done faster, everyone is always to busy and wants to speed up. I have almost been hit a number of times while crossing the street. Here it is cars first, then motorbikes, then people.

>> I have almost been hit a number of times while crossing the street. Here it is cars first, then motorbikes, then people.

I think a lot of the conflict arises from the fact that legally pedestrians have the right of way but in practice it's cars first and stay outta my way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com