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Comment by jjulius | Hacker News Reader

>... we already effectively banned kids from playing outside...

Do what now?

Once upon a time crossing the street meant walking across a 20 foot road with the occasional small car going 20-25 mph. Now it's a 4-8 lane stroad full of 6,000 pound trucks that can't see anyone shorter than 5 feet past the hood going 50 mph.

How far will you let your kid walk from home alone?

Anyway my point is just that pedestrian deaths have gone up even as the number of miles walked and biked (_especially_ by kids - the modeshare for biking to school has absolutely plummetted) goes down.

> Now it's a 4-8 lane stroad

People weren’t letting their kids play near 8 lane freeways back in the day, either.

You missed the point, which is that many roads that used to be easily crossable roads are now 4-8 lane stroads.

Yes, people didn't let their kids play near freeways in the past. But now a much larger number of streets are freeway-style roads.

Is this a California or Texas thing or something?

The hyperbole in this thread is wild to see.

Maybe? I grew up in California. The streets where my dad lives are ludicrously wide

Texas checking in here - yes, it's Texas, and no, it's not hyperbole.

Don't know what rinky dink town you're from, but here most roads are 6-8 lanes across. Yes, that includes in our small cities. They're essentially highways but with signal lights. Go to Arlington, Grand Prairie, Richardson, Fort Worth, Roanoke, Southlake, you name it, and it's just roads after roads like this. Trying to cross them is extremely dangerous.

Stroads is a correct description.

Another Texas resident, confirming yes this is largely the experience for a lot of Texas. But its not just Texas; I've seen the same in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and other places. Practically every neighborhood development since the 1980s is probably like this.

You'll have smaller streets inside of neighborhoods which are islands of nothing but houses, then massive busy streets in between. Sidewalks directly abutting these very busy streets, if even there. Usually no bike lanes.

I'm from rural Texas and it is indeed rinky dink town, not to far from the places you mention. But I moved to New England years ago and don't miss Texas at all. Keller, Southlake, even, sadly, Denton were overdeveloped hell holes then, but I never lived anywhere where kids were playing right beside an eight lane road. At worse maybe they had to cross a 4 lane road with a median if they were going somewhere outside their neighborhood, and you had lights and crosswalks for this, but mostly people lived in neighborhoods where there were... normal... roads.

They're over-developed and simultaneously run down. If you've ever driven down southlake boulevard you know it gets PACKED during rush hour.

> I never lived anywhere where kids were playing right beside an eight lane road

You leave my neighborhood and immediately it's a 50 MPH 6 lane stroad. Granted, I'm counting 3 one way, 3 the other, occasional turning lanes makes it 7 or 8.

It's true your neighborhood is fine. But there's literally nothing in your neighborhood but homes. If you need anything, no matter how trivial, you have to cross stroads. This is very much in contrast to urban mixed-use pedestrian friendly areas.

>How far will you let your kid walk from home alone?

Pretty damn far, actually, as the parent of two.

From what age? I think people are talking past each other here.

There is a point in time between infant and adulthood were you have to start letting them play unsupervised.

Every single residential street in America is full of cars parked or moving at 25+ mph. It's a miserable experience for anyone outside of a car and dangerous for smaller children who don't pay attention and can run into traffic.

>Every single residential street in America...

Even the largely carless (read: not many cars parked on the street) ones like my neighborhood that had a whole bunch of kids happily playing outside and in the street this weekend without issue? Every single one?

The street directly in front of my house is largely like that. I don't even feel very safe doing the edging standing in the street, people turn down the street off the 40MPH (probably going 45-50MPH) main road next to it and blindly start heading down the residential street at 25-30mph.

The cul-de-sac behind my house through the alley is a good bit calmer. That's where my kids go to play.

If you want your kids to grow old and you live somewhere where cars are priority you don't have much choice but your backyard, a park or wilderness. And a backyard might not be super fun/big and parks and wilderness aren't accessible without an adult.

I remember vividly when I was a kid and we were biking on the street and someone drove too fast, dad went out in the road and yelled him down, which was reasonable.

Or move to the Netherlands. But even here it's getting worse fast.

Or Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan (I think?) and parts of many other countries as well.

If you chose to live in a car friendly suburb in Sweden that's on you rather than "society" I'd say.

As I said elsewhere, my neighborhood had a whole copse of kiddos, including my own, playing out and about throughout the streets this weekend.

/shrug

Edit: I don't care about upvote tallies or karma count, but it does seem pretty silly to downvote a comment for pointing out that areas like this, and play in those areas, still exist.

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