[iamalizard]

I'm almost 2 meters tall and was crossing a street at a crosswalk with my bike yesterday, walking and pushing it at normal walking speeds, like the law requires. There was a car about to turn left from the lanes going left. There was a car from the lanes going right (the closest lanes to me) that slowed down as I started crossing the street. I assumed they saw me and that's why they were slowing down. Nope - they almost hit me but managed to hit the brakes very hard at the last possible second. Apparently they slowed down to make sure the car that would turn left would wait for them. If I was as tall as a 5 year old, maybe the car that almost hit me wouldn't have even seen me. If I got hit, I'd take it better than a 5 year old due to physics - my mass is bigger and the point where it would've hit me would've been my thighs instead of my torso. That car wasn't even with a tall hood or anything obstructing its view, just a regular car.

In another comment a few days ago I reminisced about how I was let running alone for hours on end when I was very young, and how that was normal.

It's a bit hard to reconcile both events now. I gained a lot of independence and had real unrestricted fun, but in hindsight I might've died a few times.

My idea, even if it might be traumatic, is to show the kid a few clips of people being hit by a car and getting mangled, with all the gore visible. Especially people following the laws and being careful. I miss /r/watchpeopledie as it was actually very educational.

[rkagerer]

I gained a lot of independence and had real unrestricted fun, but in hindsight I might've died a few times.

Yeah, that's called living! I definitely got myself into one or two dangerous situations growing up. I couldn't imagine a childhood where everything is safety railings and padded walls.

[lb1lf]

It's called living, which has become insanely safe compared to what it used to be only a generation or two ago.

Looking at the statistics here in my native Norway, children killed in traffic is down a couple of orders of magnitude since the sixties - while traffic, at the same time, has increased by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Same goes for drowning - drastically reduced rates compared to the sixties.

Of course, I guess one can argue that maybe it has become too safe - in the sense that kids aren't exposed to enough risk to learn how to evaluate it, leading to major crashes with reality later on.

Then again, as a parent, I kind of like the idea that there's never been a safer time to be a child.

That doesn't stop me from urging them to ditch the screen time in favour of heading out into the boonies to find something to do, though.

[paulryanrogers]

Living isn't putting your childhood self or your kids into mortal danger on the regular. There's quite a gap between unsupervised kids doing reckless stuff and knowing putting your kids out into a world not built for adult pedestrians, much less child pedestrians.

My kids still roam, albeit with check-ins, and a lot of training about streets, driveways, and people.

I don't fault parents who reach for trackers or are uncomfortable with letting young kids out of sight. Even back in the day a lot of horrible things happened that weren't reported widely. A family member of mine was nearly abducted off their bike as a teen, if not for a nearby neighbor opening the door when she knocked looking for help.

[philosopherNoob]

Had to jump in here to say: Don’t show children gore videos if you can help it. They’ll remember the horror more than the lesson. All it’ll do is make them calloused (or scared).

If you want something with a gut punch related to car safety, check out British vehicle PSA advertisements. Holy moly are those grim! They’re memorable, focused, and unflinching.

Personally, I’d go with some mini-documentaries or after-the-fact breakdowns put out by local American TV stations. They take it slow, film on location, and try to have a takeaway lesson.

[iamalizard]

Having soon a lot of real gore from a relatively young age, I may be calloused but in a good way - when something really fucked up happens that actually involves gore, death, violence or really scary, unpredictable or urgent things, I am quite calm and am able to handle situation much better than people who feel like vomiting at the sight of blood or a worm on an infection. Sure, some of the stuff I saw was in my mind for days, but I got used to it. Not to say I'm desensitized to it in a way that makes me not care about it. I'm still very empathetical to anyone who's suffered even the smallest of wounds or hardships.

I was exposed to violence first from movies (my parents let me watch anything and I thank them for that), then from shock sites, 4chan, liveleak, /r/watchpeopledie and so on.

I think I've really internalized how dangerous the road is, how dangerous machines are, how horrible war really is, how you can get killed by just saying the wrong thing, how there's always a chance you can die from anything at any moment. I still sometimes cross on reds and mouth off at someone who might be dangerous - I'm not scared of anything to an unnecessary degree, although being "scared" in a rational way is good IMO. I think I have a better way to assess risk than the average person, though.

I found some of the PSAs and they involve mild injuries or death without the injury itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUX6LABCEA

I bet if you show kids actual footage of road accidents, it will burn into their memory for a few days, long enough for them to think it over a few times. The PSAs are really forgettable here.

I really like this PSA about safety conditions as it made me recall it for a few days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOk2Akqb3CI

Now I'm actually really careful about any type of spills or grease in my kitchen even though I rarely move around big pots of boiling water.

[jszymborski]

I don't really understand how being scared/traumatized by videos of bike accidents will increase that child's visibility.

The onus here is on municipal and federal governments to make roads and cars safer.

[iamalizard]

It won't increase their visibility, obviously. It will make them think twice before going on that crosswalk. Maybe they'll wait for a car that slows down after they've taken only 1 step on the crosswalk, maybe they'll wait for their eyes to meet the driver's or to see the driver making a "go, go" sign with their hand.

Governments should make roads safer but until they do, we should care for ourselves.

Imagine a sidewalk where the ground is crooked, full of holes and parts of the pavement sticking up. Should we blindly go on the sidewalk saying "the government should make it better" or should we exercise caution not to trip and fall?

The same logic applies to most dangerous things. Should the government make sure the food and supplements that are imported is safe? Of course. Does that mean you should order food and supplements from any shady site from a random 3rd world country with no reviews? Absolutely not.

[paulryanrogers]

> Should we blindly go on the sidewalk saying "the government should make it better" or should we exercise caution not to trip and fall?

The answer isn't binary. It's both. Governments are us, and we use that tool to manage collective resources like roads and sidewalks.

Obviously we do what we can in the moment. That doesn't mean those given power are free to neglect our collective property, or even sell out to the interests of those who would profit from pedestrian hostile "solutions".

[iamalizard]

> The answer isn't binary. It's both. Governments are us, and we use that tool to manage collective resources like roads and sidewalks.

Definitely, that was my point, too. We should strive for change but accept when change hasn't happened yet.

[thaumasiotes]

> It won't increase their visibility, obviously. It will make them think twice before going on that crosswalk.

Meanwhile in Shanghai, it tends to be a little too difficult to cross an entire street at once, so the way you cross is lane by lane, as if you were playing Frogger. (Except that you'll rest on lane dividers as opposed to right in the middle of a lane.)

Pedestrians getting run over while doing this is not a noticeable problem.

[tstrimple]

Not a noticeable problem because they are Chinese and there are so many of them it doesn't matter if 4k die while trying to cross at crosswalks?

https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/how-dangerous-are-china...

[iamalizard]

How does it compare to other countries, though? 4000 is high, but it's out of 1400000000.

[tstrimple]

I think this perfectly illustrates the difference between you and me. You think there is nothing wrong with the untimely death of literally thousands of people because there are millions more who look just like them. I expect more of humanity.

[thaumasiotes]

4000 is also hugely exaggerated. The link specifies that almost 4000 Chinese pedestrians were killed, in all of China, between 2014 and 2017.

[ShinyLeftPad]

When I was in China I got nearly run over walking on green light because someone decided they were in a rush and run a red. It's apparently socially acceptable if you have enough money to afford the fines and you honk your horn while doing it. Unregulated crossings are another level of rolling the dice.

[thin_carapace]

i agree with your latter point but i must state that kids probably should be scared of being squashed by american blimp trucks

[giardini]

I don't think you need to show videos, but definitely discuss street safety with your children when they are young. Possibly several times at different ages.

When I was young my dad took me out to the curb and warned me about the dangers of being on the street. He pointed out how fast cars were going, how being hit could be really damaging, how animals not infrequently died from being hit. He also warned about getting excited while playing games and inadvertently running into the street. Even bicycles were a danger. Everything changes at the curb. Having a good imagination, I took the lesson to heart.

[tstrimple]

About a block away from me is a private community pool that is highly used during the summer. Across from it and another block down is a park with some trails. There is a cross walk between them, but there is no lighting for it. Basically no one ever stops at the crosswalk when they see pedestrians waiting. It's a steady stream of cars just flying by at 35-40 mph. It's to the point where I don't even want to stop for them because I don't trust the other lane to stop and I don't want to "encourage" pedestrians to walk out because they see me stopped but the other side won't respond leading to an even more dangerous situation. I've even seen cars who stop get passed on double yellows because who would dare slow down a car driver trying to get somewhere. Crazy that two such popular community features are separated by thousands of pounds of steel flying by without a safe way for kids or even families to get across. To reach a protected crossing, you've got to walk about a mile in either direction to reach a stop light intersection.

[verve_rat]

Maybe, instead of trying to scare (scar?) children you should just teach them to make eye contact with the driver so you are sure they have seen you before you put yourself in the path of their car?

How much of our "safety" culture around kids is because people don't have basic life skills and aren't passing them on to kids?

[mitthrowaway2]

So many scenarios where this doesn't save you. SUV driver makes eye contact, stops, kid starts crossing the street, impatient driver behind them (who can't see past their big rear) gets tired of waiting and floors it around them into the open lane, not realizing that the driver in front was stopped for a valid reason...

[phil21]

You can only mitigate risk so much. At some point life is for living and there is a risk involved in it. Sequestering oneself or one's kids to home seems outright inhumane to me.

Making eye contact and waiting for a vehicle to actually respond to the conditions at hand will eliminate the vast majority of "assumed" mistakes. Trying to be 100% aware of traffic and understanding that folks can be even bigger aggressive idiots is also part of it, but not perfect.

You just have to accept that in some rare instances the swiss cheese holes will line up regardless of what you do. And be at peace with it.

I suppose since this seems to logical and "not a big deal" to me means that I am extreme outlier on the subject.

[5-0]

Where I live, overtaking at a crosswalk is illegal because of that risk.

[adrianN]

If every driver abided by traffic laws at all times we would have a lot fewer accidents.

[CalRobert]

If you’re breaking the law it’s harder to call it an accident.

[benn0]

I would live for this to be the answer - it’s definitely helpful, but I know a number of people who have made eye contact with a driver who has then proceeded to drive directly into them. I’ve had near misses like this too. It’s hard to imagine until you’ve experienced it, but incredibly scary to see someone who is looking directly at you and still somehow not reacting.

[iamalizard]

Both scar(r)ing them AND telling them to make eye contact seems better to me. People don't appreciate low-likelihood or abstract risks. I bet children appreciate them even less than grown-ups. They've never witnessed someone being hit by a car but they've witnessed thousands of people NOT being hit by a car. How do you think they would really internalize the rule to make eye contact without any evidence? Hell, even I'm more likely to make eye contact with the driver after yesterday's spike in my heart rate, and I'm not 5 years old

[rkagerer]

In my experience, the practice of eye contact is natural and generally pretty effective. "I see you, you see me. Acknowledged."

[rwmj]

Or drivers could look where they're going.

[lb1lf]

It never ceases to amaze me how many drivers appear to not register blindingly obvious objects in their path.

Ranging from the understandable, but unacceptable (Say, CBDR/Constant bearing, decreasing range, which makes a lot of drivers misidentify an object as stationary even as it is moving towards them on a collision course) to the flat out unbelievable - I've been almost run over in a lit pedestrian crossing. While wearing hi-vis clothing. Pushing a baby stroller, also hi-vis. AFTER having made eye contact with the driver and even gotten a nod from her. After the car slowed down. Sigh.

In the latter case, it turned out she had assumed that us making eye contact meant that I had seen the car and would wait until it had safely passed the crossing. At least that was what she claimed when I asked why, oh why she'd approached the crossing, slowed down, made eye contact with the pedestrian - and yet proceeded to drive through...

Oh, and don't even get me started on the proliferation of touch screens forcing the driver to take his or her attention off the road to interact with the car. This was a solved problem, using physical buttons you soon learned the exact location of so you could reach for them while still keeping your attention on what was in front of you.

[verve_rat]

Yes, but as a pedestrian, do you want to bet your life on that?

[giardini]

And slow down too.

[CalRobert]

Drivers will still hit people who make eye contact. But besides that, this doesn’t help much if your kid is a runner.

[postflopclarity]

or maybe drivers should stop being reckless and dangerous

[9991]

Suggestions should remain in the realm of the possible.

[qingcharles]

I walked the mile or so each way to school from the age of 5. I'd usually never see another soul on the sidewalk, even though it was all rows of houses. There were plenty of cars about, and I had to cross a bunch of intersections, but I had some sense about me. All the kids had some vague story about knowing someone who had been run down by a car because they didn't look properly when crossing.

[vkou]

Maybe show that to drivers, too, every time they have to renew their license.