Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_snooze | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of this 99PI article/episode about how the built environment in urban Japan enables a lot of independence for little kids. You can't do that in a lot of the US because speeding cars make it unsafe to walk, and there's nowhere worthwhile within walking distance anyway. So of course US parents keep their kids on a short leash; the environment around them is hostile to anyone outside a car.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/

View on HN

Cars are not the main issue (but a huge issue due to urban sprawl caused by NIBMYism):

This is typical in large cities: https://old.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/1c7er1l/homeless_p...

Today:

"San Jose girl attacked while walking home from school, police say | KRON4" https://old.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/1cs7du6/san_jose_g...

> Police said Martinez is known to hang out in “The Jungle,” a sprawling homeless encampment that stretches along a creek adjacent to Senter Road and Keyes Street.

This is one of the richest cities in the US. A city which has squandered 100s of millions of dollars of homeless aid:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/13/audit-san-jose-failed...

This is a real issue: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/san-jose-cou...

> Student activists said they do not want to criminalize homelessness, but insist walking to school in fear has to stop.

Walking in Switzerland isn't without risk of collision from street cars, buses, cyclists and cars, especially for an unsavvy 5 year old. But the short leash rule extends to areas of parenting beyond just long walks to school. America is obsessed with infantilization all the way to the legal drinking age being fixed at 21 and strictly enforced.

You can thank the Reagan Administration for that one. The Department of Transportation had ideological scruples about mandating airbags, and came up with numbers to indicate that raising the drinking age would decrease automotive fatalities by a comparable rate.

Before that, the drinking age was up to the states.

It still is up to the states but I suppose they would lose 10% of their highway funding if they went against the law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_mini...

To be honest I think Federal laws like this that carve out "obey or be punished financially" dictates should be outlawed and unconstitutional. Or if the Federal government wants to make funding conditional then the taxes for that initiative should not be enforceable for the state that chooses to forego that service.

Nothing in life is without risk but children need to learn about the risk and what to do to minimize it.

It isn't all about the traffic. Japan also enjoys famously low crime rates by almost every metric. The most dangerous parts of Japan are safer than the best low-crime neighborhoods in the US. This bleads into all aspects of the culture. People who feel safer themselves then don't panic as much about their kids walking out of sight.

There's also societal expectations - in Japan if a five year old unaccompanied minor asks an adult a question they'd get an answer; in the USA that same thing likely will result in a call to the cops and CPS will get involved.

>> if a five year old unaccompanied minor asks an adult a question they'd get an answer

Well, cops would be involved. While walking my dog in the woods (pacific northwest, about 500m from the nearest road) I came across a young kid. She spoke no English and was clearly separated a tour group. Sun was setting. We had maybe a half hour before flashlights would be needed but my dog and I knew every tree. I wasn't sure which path she came from. She wanted help, but if I lead her back to the road I would be the one explaining my actions to the police. So I left her in the woods. (No. After some shouting into the woods, a member of the tour group came running.) My point: In the west, our fear of being accused of something nefarious can actually cause us to hesitate even when child is literally lost in the woods.

>Japan also enjoys famously low crime rates by almost every metric.

Japan is also a highly conformist and homogenous society with very little ilegal immigration.

What does some people not filling out paperwork before moving to another country have to do with how the society treats 5-year-olds?

Please stop your strawmen. My arguments were to the comment on why Japan has a very low crime rate, not how and why it treats 5 year olds.

No. You were clearly insinuating that illegal immigrants are likely to commit crimes.

By definition, they already have.

Maybe you didn't read the part about a conformist society and yet focused on the illegal immigration part due to your subjective inner bias because you haven't called anyone a racist online in the last 5 minutes.

I never said foreigners commit crimes, as if locals do not, but being very selective with your immigration does help keeping crime lower in every country that does so.

As a country you already have the crime rates of the locals, so you want to not import crime rates as well, therefore you want your immigration being a net positive across the board so you'll have to be very strict.

Why are people offended by an obvious fact?

Well, they aren’t?

>You can't do that in a lot of the US because speeding cars make it unsafe to walk

Not just speeding cars but specifically those shitty monster-trucks with crap visibility that can just run over everyone who isn't Shaq. Why in the name of all that is holy does every insecure suburban dickhead need to own a Ford F-450 Super Duty to play cowboy in the city?

And now they're worshiping the Cybertruck which has the pedestrian crash safety of a giant prison shank making it illegal in Europe. How do you expect to have safe roads for kids considering a nation's worshiping of oversized impractical cars?

Why in the name of all that is holy does every insecure suburban dickhead need to own a Ford F-450 Super Duty to play cowboy in the city?

Largely fuel economy regulations that perversely incentivize making larger cars with worse efficiency (e.g. https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...), which in turn increases demand for them, because if everyone else is driving a Canyonero you'd better get one too so you have some hope of surviving an accident.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com