You're making a statistical claim and the statistics don't support you. Although you personally are paranoid, in reality, children have gone around the neighborhood almost entirely safely for almost all of human history.

Of course there is some element of risk. That's true for life, for everyone, forever. But until you have solid data that says the kids shouldn't be able to go a very short distance to a place that they know how to get to safely, then you're speculating about what could possibly go wrong. And that's just a waste of time from a public policy perspective.