[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?

[kasey_junk]

Why are you assuming that traffic is moving at 30-45 mph through a neighborhood.

In my neighborhood the speed limit is universally 25 and the stop signs & one way streets keep traffic speeds down.

My son doesn’t know how to ride a bike yet but there are certainly under 10 yo all around riding in the streets. Further my son does walk to the park down the street by himself or with friends with the usual guidance about cars (“look both ways” etc).

[magduf]

>Why are you assuming that traffic is moving at 30-45 mph through a neighborhood.

Because that's what I see in the suburbs here in DC.

>In my neighborhood the speed limit is universally 25 and the stop signs & one way streets keep traffic speeds down.

Those aren't typical American suburbs if there's 1-way streets. That sounds much more urban in fact. The suburbs I typically see have wide streets, and 35mph speed limits, and people driving around quite a bit faster than that in their huge luxury SUVs. I also don't see kids in the streets at all, and for good reason: it's too dangerous. I don't feel safe at all on my bike, even though I ride very fast and as far right as I can (I only ride in the subdivision near me so I can get to the multi-use trail on the other side).

[tptacek]

My kids are in college right now, but everyone else in Oak Park seems to, as did everyone in Ann Arbor, as did --- to an even greater extent --- every family --- every family; it would have been extremely weird not to be allowed to ride your bike in the streets in the 1980s --- in the south side of Chicago when I was growing up, at a time when traffic fatalities were more than twice as high as they are now. I don't think your argument is rooted in facts.

It is in fact illegal in Chicago to ride your bike on the sidewalk. Your contention would have to be that children have simply ceased using bicycles, which is obviously not true.

[pvg]

It is in fact illegal in Chicago to ride your bike on the sidewalk.

How has this thread lasted so long without a single reference to the seminal work of Campbell, Algar et al[1] on the topic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rroZv3rFEoU

[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.