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Things Drivers Have Sacrificed for Kids
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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This has nothing to do with design or actual crimes. People are scared because the media is scarring them. The numbers of abductions are actually dropping but people are more and more scared because child predators were made into the bogeyman of the XXI century. It's a well known fact that crime perception in US does not align with actual crime statistics. Cars have nothing to do with it.
Jane Jacobs wrote about this in like the 1960s. More regular people on the street makes people feel safer. It probably actually makes people safer, too.
So, yes, car-first culture makes crime and fear worse. A local neighborhood with people walking about doing their business is safer than one where people just drive, park, and leave.
IMHO saying that "car culture -> less people walking -> more crime -> more fear -> less kids on the streets" is a bit of a stretch. I'm sure it can be true in some areas but is far from universal rule. European cities are very walkable yet no one lets small kids play outside alone. Many villages are way less walkable yet kids play outside alone without issues. This meme tries to imply that kids don't play outside because of cars yet it's only one of contributing factors and only in some places.
You can take it up with Jane Jacobs, I guess.
I don't think anyone's saying car dominance is the only factor, but it's a big one.
That's not the claim. The claim is “car culture -> less people walking -> ~~more crime~~ -> more fear -> less kids on the streets.” The perception matters; the reality doesn't.
More people from more walks of life (pun intended) on the street probably does reduce some types of crime, though. You're not going to be mugged on the street outside two busy restaurants and a record shop with a bunch of other people walking around.
I would argue much of Europe is pretty carbrained too. It just doesn't seem so comparatively.
But it is an interesting point. In those few areas like Amsterdam where pedestrians are quite safe, do people let kids play unattended? And if not why not? Is it due to worry about crime? Because my perception is that European cities are also quite safe from the perspective of violent crime.
I would personally have no concerns letting my kids play outside unattended if there weren't cars in the mix, so I find this mindset very strange. And my city has a lot more violence than most places in Europe, last I checked.
Not Dutch but Estonian here. I grew up playing outside, but I'm from a quiet street in a small town. In the cities, one of the actually positive influences of the soviet empire is that they built playgrounds between large apartment complexes so as far as I know, kids played outside unattended there too, but it would've likely been slightly older kids, not like a 5 year old being let out with his 8 year old friend (yes, talking about myself here).
Not sure how it is these days though. I see fewer kids running around on the street than when I was a kid. Suspect it has little to do with traffic or crime and more with the availability of entertainment via TV or phones. 25 years ago over here we had like 3 TV channels, for anything else you would've had to pay Viasat or someone - which a lot of families couldn't afford. Of course there are also just fewer kids in my hometown (at least on my street) and I have no comparison data for the bigger cities at the time of my childhood.
Sure, but the media can only scare people if they can imagine it being true. It's a lot easier to imagine someone who would do their children harm actually going through with it and succeeding when the kids are wondering around suburban cul-de-sac hell where the only other people are zooming past in a car.
EDIT: I'd like to add that the urban design also changes how people deal with this fear. For example, in Japan it's common for elementary schoolers to have a buzzer on them with a cord to pull in case of stranger danger. So clearly this fear exists there too, but you still see kids going around town without adult supervision. The reason why the buzzer can give peace of mind is because they can pretty much count on there always being people close by enough to hear the buzzer go off.
I was going to mention that none of the streets have changed where my parents live from when I grew up but it does seem much sketchier. There's more roaming homeless people from nearby freeway encampments, and cars appear to drive more dangerously or the drivers are distracted with their phones
It's all very anecdotal but where I lived you could get from my apartment building to the playground without crossing any streets. All kids were just running around unsupervised starting at 6-7yo (for me it was closer to 5yo). The entire playground was just communist style metal constructions. I cut myself on rusty nails, was hit by a metal swing and twisted my ankle while jumping off the top of a slide. Today the entire playground was replaced by wooden, safe toys and I can't imagine kids playing there unsupervised. Times have changed. It's simple as that.
What I had:
What kids have today:
In my country these fancier playgrounds are like a few per city, whereas the soviet ones were (are) much more common, so a side effect is that you could've gone to that top photo without crossing any streets, versus your parents would take you to the bottom one (either walk you there or go by car)