[magduf]

Not only is it not irrational, we're also ignoring what we're being forced to give up because of all these cars. Kids can't just run or bike around their neighborhoods safely without worrying about (or their parents worrying about) them being killed. So kids are just staying inside all the time, playing video games and getting fat.

[tptacek]

The streets in my neighborhood are crammed full of kids walking, playing, and biking. Maybe this is an idiosyncrasy of the neighborhood you live in, and not a generalizable truth about America and cars.

[magduf]

I'm quite sure what you describe is not at all normal for suburban America. Maybe there's a few pockets here and there where kids have found some safe spaces, such as in cul-de-sacs, but overall subdivisions have too many speeding drivers for kids to be safe leaving their yard.

[kasey_junk]

As my experience lines up with ‘tptaceks I’m curious if there is some objective measure we could use to determine if we are the outliers or your experience is.

Presumably that metric would track back in time to some pre-time where suburbs were safer from cars and kids didn’t have to hunker town in front of screens for safety.

[tptacek]

Well, I'm in Oak Park, a dense adjacent suburb of Chicago, there are cars everywhere, and there are kids on every street. Is Chicago somehow special?

[magduf]

Ok, so there's cars speeding around your neighborhoods, and kids playing on these very same streets without somehow getting hit by all the speeding cars? Sorry, I don't buy it.

[tptacek]

That is indeed what is happening. It's how I remember things growing up on the south side of Chicago, and how things were in Ann Arbor when we lived there with our young kids, as well.

[magduf]

So you let your young (under 10yo) kids bumble around on bicycles in the streets with traffic whizzing by at 30-45mph?

[akerl_]

I’m curious when the turning point for this would be? Given that suburbs themselves are effectively a product of a car-based commuter model, wouldn’t suburbs have always had car traffic as a basic part of their formula?

Pre-ubiquitous-cars, suburbs didn’t really exist. So it seems that any suburb-dwelling children would have always had to deal with streets used by cars.