RazrSkutr

No. In general it's safer.

Hysteria much? There are no statistics showing that IQ has plummeted.

Well, according to you the population doubled so the number of missing kids should double as well.

FFS. Make sure you rip down a few leafy branches and give a good hoot too while you're at it.

The dangers of the kid turning into a passive, scared hysteric (remind you of anyone?) are much greater than the very small chances of stranger abduction. I will grant you that the increased traffic on the roads is a real concern and that children don't in general seem to have the focus and awareness necessary for safety until about 12 in general. But the solution to that is to organize parent-supervised riding to school. Not emotional tirades about population explosion and the imminent cannibal moron invasion.

68venable

either let your kid do it or dont. Thats easy enough.

Chicago Al 

'Stranger danger' is real but only a tiny number of missing children really disappear that way. It's almost always due to a messy divorce or a runaway situation. And it happened years ago too, only people didn't talk about it. We are simultaneously safer and more fearful today.

The only way children learn how to negotiate the difficult and sometimes scarey world, and start to separate themselves from dependence on their parents, is by venturing out and doing so a step at a time. What better way to do that than for a kid to get to school by him/herself?

A woman in New York got a lot of publicity a couple of years ago for writing a newspaper column about letting her nine-year-old son take the subway alone. She now has a book and a website called 'Free-Range Kids' about this very issue, how to let kids explore the world and not be overprotective of them. (One might suspect that her newspaper column was to stir up controversy and promote the book, but I don't know about the timing there.)

We live in the Big City and while we didn't let our kids take the El alone at 9, we did, starting at about age 12, in the daytime. This is pretty common among their peer group of middle class urban kids, they know how to get around and as a result are pretty independent. Also self-confident. Our oldest daughter is now in college on the east coast. She says going into Philadelphia with friends can be frustrating as so many of them are not street-smart. 14 year old son now gets around mostly by bicycle, including to city neighborhoods several miles away. We are more relaxed on this than with his older sisters because he's 1 a boy and 2 the third child. He is also very level-headed, has great navigational skills...and most importantly, he has a cool bike he loves riding around.

This has drifted away from specifically bike safety but so did the column cited by the OP. Mrs Lovejoy ('Won't someone think of the children?!') is not the only hysterical parent around these days.

Sixty Fiver

My 10 and 12 year old daughters are part of a small group of students that ride their bikes to school and their one way commute is 7km / 4.5 miles and part of that takes them through some very high density traffic and busy intersections.

Many of their classmates live closer to school and many are driven there by their parents which makes for some incredible traffic congestion at the school.

I ride with them to and from school and will do this until I am sure their skills are sufficient to ride alone... I cannot expect my oldest daughter to watch out for her younger sister who has good skills but is a bit of a speed freak... that is my responsibility.

RazrSkutr

You'd think, wouldn't you? But, no apparently not. That's what the original article is about: the parents decided that their child was competent to make the trip but the school disagreed and as a result reported them for child neglect.

There are plenty of similar cases in the USA:

https://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2...ike-to-school/

RazrSkutr

Bravo. Your kids are lucky.

closetbiker

When my kids were starting school, I rode with them, sometimes behind them to see if they were riding safely. When they got older, they rode on their own.

By the time they were 9 and 12, they transferred to a more distant school (mom just started work there) that was 7 kilometers from home and I would show up after school to ride home with them through the much busier streets.

I stayed with the 9 year old and let my 12 year old go ahead on his own.

Both did very well. Neither were scared and didn't have a problem with the traffic or intersections.

People need to prepare kids and have confidence in them when their behavior warrants it.

DX-MAN

NONE of my kids, adult or otherwise, are "passive, scared hysterics", and neither am I (nice try); where are YOUR statistics to prove THAT claim, since you're all hung up on that?
OH -- and I'm not calling for kids to be armored-car-escorted to school, or anywhere else. If my schedule supported it, I'd escort both of my little ones to school on bikes DAILY. My points are made from DIRECT OBSERVATION OF SOCIETY, both locally and nationally. If you disagree, good for you. If you want to call me names, then please don a thick plastic bag and tie it tightly over your head. I will then listen you TRY.

I'd say a lot more, but I don't need the mods deleting me.

Seattle Forrest

I'll walk 5 to 10 miles in a day around the mountains with my camera ... but in the city I usually bike with it ( and the 'pod ) in my backpack.

Seattle Forrest

No, the world isn't more dangerous now than it was 40 years ago. Very much the opposite. And danger isn't measured by the number of humans in an area.


"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." - Socrates

That sounds like the cries of the eugenicists a hundred years ago, and it's just as false now. People aren't evolving to have less intelligence, at a breakneck pace that can be seen from one generation to the next.

Ironically, what you've just said is why the violent crime rate is lowering itself over time. It spiked a bit ( as you'd expect from the demographics ) in the 1970s and 1980s, but it's generally fallen for the last 50,000 years, and one of the main reasons is that each generation seems to have stricter standards than the one before it. But out standards improve even faster than our behavior, so there's always a lag to complain about.

When was the last time you heard about a lynching or a pogrom? What about a public hanging? Those were all done away with in the early half of the 20th century in the US; people eventually found them repugnant, while our ancestors found them downright entertaining.

atbman

They were not actually reported to the authorities

skye

Several studies have shown that the paranoia and assumption of rampant degeneracy being demonstrated by several of the posters here is strongly associated with higher levels of TV viewership.

DX-MAN, you might want to turn the idiot tube off before it's too late. Judging from your rantings, however, it may be too late already.

BarracksSi

Thank you, John Walsh, for making everyone believe that the world is a million times more dangerous than it was before your show.

FFS x 2; I walked to kindergarten.

BarracksSi

That illustrates the shortsightedness of so many people. It's like when everyone was getting their first SUVs -- they think, "Oh wow, I can see over everyone else," but don't realize that, soon, everyone else will be just as high off the ground as they are, and they lose their height advantage. The only logical step from an SUV in terms of seeing over traffic is to a Kenworth truck.

Of course the streets are busy around the school. Back when I went to school, you saw buses, and that was pretty much it. Great tools for moving hundreds of kids around.

KD5NRH

You're really behind the times, aren't you? Even the kids that ride the bus have mommy drive them the 250 yards to the bus stop in the fullsize SUV, then sit there idling until the bus shows up. In the afternoon, she'll be back out there, A/C or heat running full blast, waiting for the bus again so they won't have to walk the rest of the way home.

closetbiker

me too. I remember the first day, my mom went with me. Day 2, she said good by and shut the door.

I was momentarily scared, then I put one foot in front of the other and grew up a bit.

Sixty Fiver

When I 6 years old I got up in the morning, hopped on my bike and stopped at home when I was hungry.

It was a small city of about 9000 people.

DX-MAN

Sorry, everybody, my tower isn't made of ivory. You don't think I'm wrapped tightly enough, then put me on ignore -- like I really care.

I respond on this forum when some collection of words strikes a spark, however slight, in my mind. Think what you like, you're not more enlightened, more socially aware, or -- pardon me while I laugh -- more intelligent.

I'm glad your lives haven't been scraped as raw as mine and several family members' have been; but NEVER think that because you don't see it, it doesn't exist. Until I saw some of what I have, I'd never have believed it, either -- I know better now.

Your various special and sparkling awarenesses will not alter the worldview I've been more or less forced to accept.


(Oh -- BTW -- TV? LMAO!!!! I watch more "2-1/2 Men" than anything else! Try again, Sigmund....)

sm1960

I used to ride my bike everywhere when I was a kid. I'd be lucky to live a month doing that today. Between the overcrowded streets and the gangs there is no way I'd let my kid, let alone myself ride those same streets. If you think this world hasn't changed much in the past 30 years it's time to come out of your hole.

I've long ago moved from that town, and even though this town doesn't have a gang problem, there are still more perves on the street today than before. I get nervous every time my 18yr old daughter goes for a run, and still reminder her to be cautious of strangers.

Connell

A few weeks ago I was riding my bike around some of the back streets in Denver. Not going anywhere in particular, just exploring.

Around 3-ish, I happened to be passing a grade school just as it was letting out. There was almost complete gridlock as the Mommies competed for space in their oversized SUV's. I saw one of them, and I'm not making this up, drive 150 yards, from the school gate to her own driveway. With one child in the back. The time it took her to drive goldenchild in that stop and go traffic was almost certainly longer than it would have taken the pair of them to walk home.

Now this was in a quite affluent neighborhood, she was driving a Mercedes, in broad daylight, on a beautiful day. This mother wasn't worried about abductions, or gangs, or pervs. She was lazy. Nothing more than that.

Seattle Forrest

You don't think there were gangs 30 years ago??? And you're telling other people to come out of their holes?

BarracksSi

I don't buy that sentiment one bit. There have always been perverts out there, but we've (and I mean the collective "we", not just you; you only happened to say it this time) been scared silly and think that everyone is prowling around looking for kids and women to abduct and ****.

I'll contend that it's been in the name of TV ratings. We knew "stranger danger" when I was in grade school, but the thought that every child was at risk at every moment outside of their own home simply didn't exist until John Walsh went on his crusade. I'm not saying he wasn't justified, but for the whole country to get stuck on one abduction case smacks of a publicity agent, not a father looking for his son.

Connell

Want to know who is the real threat to America's children?

"Among children under age 5 years in the United States who were murdered in the last quarter of the 20th century, 61% were killed by their own parents."

and

"Furthermore, multiple authors have suggested that rates of child murder by parents are underestimated in epidemiological studies of child death."

Source:
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/...ull/162/9/1578

Similar statistics from Britain show parents to be the prime suspects in 78% of child murders.

But yeah. Let's drive our kids to school to protect them from strangers.

Connell

Here's more to chew on.

FBI crime statistics show that in 1999 parents were responsible for 57 percent of these (children under the age of 5) murders, with family friends and acquaintances accounting for another 30 percent and other family members accounting for 8 percent.

95% of the murders are committed by family members, friends or acquaintances. Yet the media likes to keep us paranoid about the remaining 5%. Why is that, do you suppose?

Source:
https://www.slate.com/id/2063086

octopuswithafez

Yeah, I walked to school starting 1st grade and only took a bus when I was in Junior High and then from 10th grade on I was on public transit but that's because my school was 19 KM away, DoDDs school overseas...

The problem I see now, is that in many places, there is not even a safe place to WALK to school with subdivisions having no access beyond a 50 MPH four lane road with no shoulders.