[arjie]

We recently lived in Taiwan for a month and I was struck by the fact that from 2022-2024 Taipei had zero pre-teen traffic fatalities. My own San Francisco neighborhood has had more within the last two months!

The only thing that presents a persistent risk to children, I think, is motor vehicles and the way they’re driven. Children make mistakes and San Francisco’s tolerance for traffic fatalities is very high.

[beacon294]

To be fair, you're cherry picking traffic fatality data. It's topical now but it's not common.

[arjie]

I actually don’t think there’s a single year where San Francisco has seen zero pre-teen traffic deaths. I think even my neighborhood is positive for the last two years. Taipei has more people, more children, and even by a percentage.

The number of pre-teen traffic fatalities is the only concern I have when I’m thinking of letting my children walk around because I think the other risks are relatively overblown. Sure we have an occasional Bill Gene Hobbs and the like but I think only traffic fatalities are near certainty.

These are for accompanied children, so leaving a 5 year old to wander is way different than when I was 5 years old. In SF, I’d rate the chance of survival to 12 at under 90% for unaccompanied 5 year olds walking around the city along the range that I used to at that time.

Teens are pretty self-capable in decision making but pre-teens just don’t have judgment yet. I feel like this is a pretty reasonable statistic to match.

[xboxnolifes]

There's no need to cherry pick data. The US's traffic fatality record is bad pretty much over the entire country.