[JohnFen]

> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer.

It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

[smo29]

My friend and I were stopped by an officer and asked to show identification. We were just walking down the street, age 12. This is in the midwest.

Dismiss complaints about police at your own peril.

[MBlume]

Sounds nice. I've personally spoken on the phone with a police officer who told me he'd involve CPS if he saw my daughter walking (two blocks!) to school again.

[jkestner]

One of the nice things about Texas is that it has a law against that. Tell your reps to get something similar passed. https://letgrow.org/texas-becomes-third-state-to-enshrine-re...

I'm reminded of how Georgia will pay foster parents of homeless kids more than it'd cost to simply put a roof over those kids' families heads. https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-housing-assistanc...

[gnicholas]

Yeah, in CA you aren't allowed to leave a kid under 6 in a car if "there are conditions that can pose a risk to the child’s health and safety, even if accompanied by another child who is not yet 13. What does it mean for conditions to "pose a risk"? Obviously high heat, but it's not clear what else could qualify.

I don't ever leave my kids (one that is under 6 and one that is well over 6, but not yet 13) alone in a car, since I don't want police or nosy passersby injecting themselves in a perfectly benign situation.

[mitthrowaway2]

I don't think any of the parent posters were talking about leaving kids in a car. That is certainly a dangerous thing to do.

[gnicholas]

Why is it "certainly dangerous" to leave a 5 year old and a 10 year old in a car, while I go into a store to pick something up?

[ClimaxGravely]

Not the person you asked but if I had to guess it might be similar to how people react to leaving a dog in a car. That is to say it's a heat issue.

[Symbiote]

Unlike dogs, children can open doors and windows, and can shout for help if they think it essential.

[koolba]

How old is your daughter and what happened when you told him to mind his own business and called his bluff?

[JumpCrisscross]

> what happened when you told him to mind his own business and called his bluff?

It's not a bluff. From what I've read, fighting CPS is expensive. (Though I would raise the issue with the police chief.)

[deprecative]

You want to antagonize an untouchable murder junkie? In what universe is that a good idea?

[koolba]

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I also disagree with framing all police as “murder junkies”.

[asoneth]

I agree that we need to push back, but that can also be done politically.

Antagonizing a local police officer is a terrible idea unless you are wealthy and/or well-connected. Most are kind, but not all are, and antagonizing the wrong one can make your life hell.

(I also agree that the vast majority of police are not "murder junkies". But it's also not surprising that a handful of folks like that do join an organization that nearly always manages to protect their members from repercussions when they use lethal force.)

[alistairSH]

They might not personally be "murder junkies" but through the "thin blue line", they almost all enable that behavior from their peers.

[kasey_junk]

I find these stories of kids not walking (or biking) outside wild! Hundreds of kids in my neighborhood walk, bike, or public transit to school everyday with no issues.

I do worry about car on pedestrian crashes but the city has crossing guards and traffic calming for just this.

Where are these places that you can’t be outside as a child?

[tmnvix]

I'm not from the US, but just zoomed into a random spot in what I assume is a typical shopping district in suburban Atlanta[1]. Can't imagine many young kids safely walking or biking around there. Compare a local shopping district near me[2]. Plenty of young kids walking and biking to school here alone and in groups.

[1] https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@33.8644514,-84.5949946,3a,75y...

[2] https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@-41.2953813,174.7673872,3a,75...

edit: Might add that close to those shops in [2] there is a large botanic garden with play area and stream, one small and one very large reserve with native bush and an abundance of mountain bike tracks, a playing field, the central city area with cafes, many theatres, galleries, a library, and all sorts of other things that a child can make use of without supervision. All of this is within 5 minutes walk of those shops. Within 10 minutes walk there is the waterfront and a very safe swimming beach.

[kasey_junk]

But there are no schools or houses there?

I’m not arguing that there are places that are pedestrian unfriendly in the US or even that there are more places per capita like that in the US.

I’m just saying it would be weird for homes and schools to be placed in those locales, and even weirder for governmental officials to take action against kids walking in appropriate locales.

Here is the shopping district nearest me: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SUZCyUHuGbCAwcYT7?g_st=ic

And here is a place that is inappropriate for pedestrians near you https://maps.app.goo.gl/aLdDyWdbFq6vUG6X9?g_st=ic

Within 5 minutes of my area are at least 5 parks/play lots, a beach and a library.

Theaters, cafes and galleries are on that street.

Within 1 mile of that location is a 550 acre public park with all manner of facilities and less than 2 miles away is a 370 acre park.

Thats not mentioning the museums and university facilities near here.

None of that is to flex it’s just to say a random sampling is not an appropriate retort. The US can obviously be less car centric but to imply that it’s impossible or strange for kids to be outside on there own in the US is a wild assertion and anyone making it needs to provide extraordinary proof.

[ars]

You compared a commercial zone to a residential zone. What did you expect?

I mean drive around a little in the place you picked - do you see any houses? Now move your map a couple miles in any direction and you'll see forests with walking trails, ponds, parks, small streets where kids can play on the street. That's what it's actually like.

[tmnvix]

That 'residential zone' has a supermarket, brewery, bakery, cafe, hairdresser, restaurant, bar, video store(!), community hall, basketball court, park, childcare centre, greengrocer, takeaway shop, and secondhand store all within 50m on a street with a 30km/h speed limit.

When I explore that area surrounding the commercial zone in Atlanta I find just houses, green spaces, and roads. It's a crappy environment for anyone without a car (e.g. kids).

[ars]

I guess you are used to zillions of tiny stores near all the houses?

People in the US don't like that, they like central large stores in one area, and then residences without any business nearby. You are wrong though, it's actually very nice for the kids, they can play without worry. But they can't go shopping. Big deal, that hardly matters.

I lived in a place like that, it's actually a really nice way to grow up. Much better than the packed-in way that they do it in Europe or New York. Instead of stores, you have space. And yes, you can play in the road, there's not that many cars, since the only driving nearby is if you live there. And kids can and do, ride bikes all over the place, because again, hardly any cars.

It's different tradeoffs. Also don't forget America is big, really really big. Without a car you basically can't go anywhere, America is too big for public transport to work, with the exception of a couple large cities.

And they like it that way.

Americans don't want to live closely packed near other people. They like having space. The like having huge houses, and huge yards. They like not hearing the neighbors. (And if you want something different, you can live in a large city.)

I've been in the kinds of cities you seem to like, and I find them miserable experiences, it's so crowded, you can't get away from people! The stores are so small, the selection is terrible and the costs high. And you can't go anywhere since you need a bus to do anything (which means you can't take very much with you, and you don't have anyplace to store things), instead of just hop in your car. You can go anywhere, you can leave your possessions locked in your car, so you don't have to carry them.

I've talked to people who used to live in New York, then moved out, and they act like prisoners who found freedom. They had no idea how nice it is to live somewhere with space. Yes you need a car for that, but that's hardly a problem.

[alistairSH]

People in the US don't like that, they like central large stores in one area

Not all of us. I hate strip malls. They're terrible. I have to drive to them. I have to walk across a stinking, hot, dangerous slab of car-infested parking lot to get into the stores. The stores themselves are packed with piles of shit I don't want, forcing me to roam around looking for what I need.

Cars in the suburbs are literally a problem because we heavily subsidize their use through free parking, subsidized roads (only 30% of Virginia's VDOT budget comes from use taxes - the rest is from general revenue), and failure to fully capture negative externalities (emissions, etc). It's also rare that a suburb has the tax base to maintain it's own physical infrastructure - the land values simply aren't high enough (because it's too spread out) to be anything but a Ponzi scheme, where those costs are kicked down the road onto future generations.

[alistairSH]

My neighborhood is <1 mile from the local school complex (all 3 levels on one plot). There are literally ZERO road crossings to get there. Yet, the students are bussed.

So, every winter, there's a pile of kids standing at the bus stop. With their parents waiting nearby in idling cars. They could quite literally walk their kid to school and back in the time they spend waiting for the bus.

And to make it worse, those kids are literally NOT allowed to walk home unless a parent is there to retrieve them. Otherwise the school will put them on the bus.

It's completely bonkers.

[bcrosby95]

I wonder if there's an urban/suburban/rural or political divide when it comes to this.

I live in a suburb in California and have never ran into this problem. But we're also unincorporated and don't have cops with nothing better to do than harass some kid walking to school alone.

We're also surrounded by people whose kids are now in their 20s-30s. They don't see our kids running around as a nuisance - they're relatively new empty nesters and the kids seem to evoke nostalgia as they discuss the different things their kids did around the neighborhood when they were young.

[Talanes]

I grew up in rural California in the one town in the county that was incorporated; the kind of place where every cop in town shows up if anything happens at all. I biked and rollerbladed to school alongside literal highways and never was approached about it once.

[beej71]

And in my rural California town growing up the cops pulled you over for everything. I was once pulled over for riding my bicycle "fast". I wasn't speeding.

Every place is different.

[bcrosby95]

Oh yeah, for sure. But I think the argument is that times have changed.

[asoneth]

> in my area none of this is actually true

That's wonderful you live in place where children are can roam freely without being injured or killed by drivers. But this is a real threat in most of the US. Being killed in a motor vehicle crash is the second highest cause of death among children and adolescents. (It was the highest until 2020 when firearm-related injuries overtook them.[1])

For every 100,000 people the Netherlands has 3.8 annual traffic deaths, the US has 12.9, and Libera (the worst I could find[2]) has 35.9. That means when it comes to traffic deaths the US is 3.4x more deadly than the Netherlands and Liberia is 2.8x more deadly than the US.

I bike with my kids and let them walk to school and we talk about how to manage these risks. But being near roads in the US is less safe than most other developed countries by a statistically significant margin.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

[tzs]

Most of that in the US is children who were riding in a car that crashes.

The number of children who are killed by cars as pedestrians or bicyclists is much lower. In 2021 for example it was 176 pedestrian children and 38 bicyclist children [1].

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[asoneth]

That's an interesting point I need to think about. I do wonder how the deaths would compare to the number of trips taken, because children in the US take significantly fewer trips by bike than children in the Netherlands. Given that pedestrian deaths were at a 40 year high[1] in the US last year, I wonder if the relatively smaller number of children killed is simply a reflection of the low number of children walking.

I can say though that the few times I've ridden on the road with my children were the most stressful of my life, I have never done it since, and it made me completely understand why I no longer see any other children or parents doing it.

[1] https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet...

[AlbertCory]

I live a couple blocks from a middle school and a high school. The streets and sidewalks are full of kids walking or biking, alone or in groups, at school start/end times. There are crossing guards at the intersections they use.

This isn't a poor neighborhood but it's not terribly wealthy, either.

Frankly, if you visit some other country for a couple weeks, you don't get any more than the most superficial idea of what life is like there.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Overzealous neighbors in the US will have someone's house sold out from under them when the grass is too high and they don't pay the fines to the HOA for mowing it. The idea that they'll be ok with children wandering around unsupervised is preposterous on its face. The cops might not care either way, but only until the busybodies start nagging. Especially the sort of busybodies that live in the places where any sane parent might consider letting their kids wander. Kids would probably go unmolested by aging Karens in the bad parts of Baltimore or Gary IN, but then they have other problems.

I agree with you that the risk of being killed by a car is somewhat low though.

[thfuran]

The US is a country with hundreds of millions of people in tens of thousands of municipalities in dozens of states. The idea that because outliers exist, they describe the typical experience everywhere in the nation is preposterous on its face.

[rootusrootus]

One place I'd have hoped would be able to understand such a simple concept is HN. Especially with all the Europeans who frequent this site.

330 million people with about the same land area as Europe. Yet people simultaneously think there can be a pretty big difference between, say, UK and Poland, but think that every newsworthy event that happens anywhere in the US is representative of all of the US.

It would be hilarious if it were not sad.

[em-bee]

uhm, not quite. it's all relative. regions in europe for centuries have been separated by national borders and still are separated by languages. as a result, each region in europe is homogeneous, but different from other regions in ways that doesn't compare to the differences in the US. pretty much the only thing that is really the same every country in europe is mcdonalds and cocacola.

yes, there are plenty of differences in the US too, but they are limited to much smaller regions. it is more likely to say that pittsburgh and los angeles are different than the east coast vs the west coast. i have lived in both regions, as i have lived and traveled in many regions of europe. the most stark differences in the US are local, when you compare say an amish town with another town nearby. or chinatown which exists many cities. but for almost any regional uniqueness in the US you can find multiple locations all over the US that share that uniqueness. which is not the case in europe.

the problem is that we tend to overstate our differences. i have lived in europe, the US, and new zealand, and i thought they were all very different from each other, until i traveled to asia and africa, and realized that in comparison all western countries really are pretty much the same.

in the end we all have much more in common than we realize.

[JohnFen]

This was the fundamental point I was alluding to.

The US is huge, and incredibly diverse. I have no doubt that there are places where the sorts of things being reported here happen. I know for a fact, though, that there are many places where such things are unheard of.

As a rule of thumb, any time someone says "this is how it is in the US", they're probably wrong. It may be how it is in some parts of the US, but there are few things that are actually universal here.

[anon291]

Most American homes don't have HOAs. Don't buy homes that do. HOAs should severely undervalue a property automatically. HOAs are anti-democratic. It's easier to get rid of a city than an HOA.

[atmavatar]

While that's true that many (and perhaps most!) HOAs are awful, that isn't categorically true for all of them.

I live in a neighborhood with an HOA. Its purpose is primarily to act as a collective for bargaining with the city government. It also negotiated a sweet deal with the local waste disposal services - they're covered by the HOA dues, which are lower than what my parents pay a mile or so away. It sends out quarterly newsletters about local events and has yearly meetings and elections for its handful of officers.

I was hesitant to buy into this neighborhood when I first learned there was an HOA, but the bylaws don't prevent me from doing anything with my property that the city ordinances don't already prohibit. I've never received any complaints from my HOA, nor have any of my neighbors to my knowledge.

tl;dr: not all HOAs are bad, but it's always a good idea to check their bylaws before committing to a residence that has one.

[anon291]

> I live in a neighborhood with an HOA. Its purpose is primarily to act as a collective for bargaining with the city government.

That's called a political party

> It also negotiated a sweet deal with the local waste disposal services - they're covered by the HOA dues, which are lower than what my parents pay a mile or so away. It sends out quarterly newsletters about local events and has yearly meetings and elections for its handful of officers.

Yeah... this is called a neighborhood association. We have that too, despite not having an HOA

> I was hesitant to buy into this neighborhood when I first learned there was an HOA, but the bylaws don't prevent me from doing anything with my property that the city ordinances don't already prohibit. I've never received any complaints from my HOA, nor have any of my neighbors to my knowledge.

Then what's the point other than to channel money? if you want to pay taxes, just ask your city to collect it. Like I said, it's a lot easier to get rid of a city than an HOA.