even in small towns its not safe to let your kid walk home anymore
It’s as safe as it ever was. Kids always faced risks when they were walking to school. There were always sexual predators and kidnappers and drivers who ran stop signs. Nothing new under the sun. I had to walk over a mile to elementary school back in the seventies. It would be the same distance if I lived there now. It’s true that in some small towns local schools have been closed and combined with schools in nearby towns, but the great majority of the population lives in urban and suburban areas where the distances to schools are still typically reasonable. I do feel bad for the kids stuck with long bus rides. One year I had a bus ride to our local parochial school and hated every minute of it. All those obnoxious kids I could ignore at school were jammed onto a bus with me. Grrrr
The sensational treatment of crimes in the national media exaggerates greatly the danger. That’s much of what passes for “news” these days.
My 38 year old daughter is not an excellent driver. To her credit, she has not had an accident in about 18 years, but both of those were due to her inattentive driving. I do not like to ride with her. She averages a ticket a year over the last ten years. That being the case, her brother suggested that she buy a tank to drive for her own safety. She drives a late model Jeep Grand Cherokee. Someday she will have another wreck. Luckily, she has a good job and makes her own car, house, and insurance payments. Safe, well maybe for her, but I pity whoever she hits.
it is NOT as safe as it ever was around here
“it is NOT as safe as it ever was around here”
It’s not here. We live in a very extremely rural area. We don’t have any of those fancy, store-bought hike/bike rails-to-trails paths around here, just a highway. I exercise quite a bit, indoors and out. Since a “gym” is a 40 mile round trip I like to ride my bicycle outdoors, weather permitting (much more fun than indoor Air-Dyne or the treadmill).
I move pretty well for an old guy, covering 7 miles every day in 25 - 26 minutes, straight-through pedaling. I must ride on the highway margin, just outside the fog line. It seems as every day goes by, more and more distracted drivers come swerving down the road and sometimes with a couple tires temporarily outside the fog line and I never know if they will correct or keep coming. I have to know when it’s time to bail at 17 to 20 mph, gravel shoulder.
Because it’s rural and traffic is very light I guess drivers figure It’d be a good time to darn some socks, pick their nose, play on face book…
It’s getting worse, not better. We’ve had several bicyclists/pedestrians hit.
Please don’t tell me I have no right to ride my bicycle outside a fog line. That’s not what I’m debating, here.
CSA
When the courts mandated busing for racial balance what 20 years or so ago, thats when everybody started getting bused to school instead of walking or biking. Now it is a right to be transported a half mile home.
We’re in a smaller town but I really can’t say that it is safer than it was 30 years ago or as safe. I really don’t don’t know. The problem is perverts are mobile and schools are easily identified, plus on regular schedules, making it easy to stalk someone. Plus interstates and public transit seem to have helped this mobility. Drugs flow with the interstates and the perverts seem to flow with the drugs. Outside of arming every school kid, I’m not sure what the answer is. Surely vetting scouts and churches, but how do you vet and watch the general public for those few first time perverts?
For people like asemaster who don’t plan on getting into crashes I have only one response. That is why they call them “accidents”. If you knew that crashes were going to happen they would call them “intentionals”. I have had deer burst out of the underbrush on two lane roads and, unless one is willing to drive 15 miles per hour, there was no way to avoid hitting it. I am a careful, defensive driver with an excellent record but I still want a car with the best safety features I can get, for me AND my children. Call me crazy but I don’t want my last living thought to be “maybe I should have gotten a safer car”…
But what I see resulting from all this is the MISTAKEN assumption that is all the car’s duty to do all the protecting and these same demading people are the ones who omit learning to drive and actually DEMAND that the auto makers are at fault and need to do more babysitting…
I want a bumper that will…bump.
A fender bender should not render the vehicle un-drivable.
I have had deer burst out of the underbrush on two lane roads and, unless one is willing to drive 15 miles per hour, there was no way to avoid hitting it.
I have had one high speed deer collision and one fairly low speed deer collision, both in old tech “death trap” cars. In both cases, the deer got the worst of it and I experienced body damage to my cars but they were still drivable. I didn’t so much as get a scratch.
I have hit deer with cars without ABS or air bags. No injuries no problem. Even with my 68 Dart with the only safety feature was shoulder belts and a collapsible steering column. A friend hit a deer with his Pontiac with air bags some years ago. The air bags went off and they both went to the hospital with severe bruising from the air bags. In my Riviera, I never even spilled my coffee. Yes, accidents are by nature unpreventable but you can minimize the impact by choosing your options on how to hit but saying that cars that don’t crush on impact, without air bags, or no ABS are unsafe, is a marketing stretch and just simply not true. Now if I hit a tree straight on at 70 MPH, I’ll be happy for the air bags. I don’t discount the safety features but its not top of my list.
I spose now I’ll end up in an accident, so I gotta get to the lumber yard before dark when the deer come out. Dang ole cable company messin’ with me again. If I can figure out which wire is which that I strung 20 years ago, I’m gonna try out my antenna for some of my TVs.
@Bing - I hit my deer at 55 mph in an 07 Accord. Front end destroyed. No air bag deployment and all I felt was “bump” as I punted the deer 75 feet down the road. I am surprised that a deer caused an airbag deployment in your friends Pontiac. Did he hit something more substantial after hitting the deer? Physics says he hit a VERY big deer or something more solid to make the air bags deploy.
My ex-wife took on a Suburban head on with my 2000 Accord at 45 mph and survived with bumps and bruises (yes the airbags deployed). The first responders were able to open the drivers door without special tools and were amazed at her condition. The airbags and crumple zones saved her life although the car was a total loss. Modern cars with safety features do not replace good driving habits. But I will take a “safe” car over a dangerous one every day of the week.
Now if I hit a tree straight on at 70 MPH, I'll be happy for the air bags.
If you hit a tree head on at 70 mph, I doubt that airbags will make that much difference. 70 mph impacts are a lot like airliner crashes, no survivors.
When the 65 Triumph was new there were approximately 1/3 the number of vehicles on the road than what we have today and many of those drivers could actually drive! It’s much scarier these days and I’ll surround myself with all the protection I can get. Not to mention all the distractions we now have. Back then we just enjoyed driving and occasionally adjusted the AM radio…
@bloody_knuckles They would have hit it going about 70 on the freeway. Just can’t remember what year the car was, maybe early 90’s. Only a year or two old and enough front end damage that they decided to get rid of it.
Most places are definitely safer than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Certain neighborhoods have gone downhill (most of Detroit), but in the country as a whole violent crime rates are far lower than they were in most of the past. Accident rates if all sorts are also down. Gang activity has dropped in the last twenty years.
The frothing news media loves to talk about crime as if we’re suffering an epidemic when we are in one of the safest periods of the last 200 years. There was an increase in property crime over the last decade, but recessions and widespread unemployment contribute to that. Violent crime stayed quite low, to the surprise of some. It has a lot to do with demographics. If there are a lot of men in their teens and twenties violent crime generally rises. Right now we have an aging population. AARP members don’t commit carjackings.
you must live pretty far from the mean streets to have that view mark, perhaps the cities have gotten better, which given their population would explain the crime numbers, but rural and small town America has gone to hell.
you have no idea how much worse things have gotten.
when I was an adolescent I would often walk thru the worst part of town by the river. it was a black neighborhood, but no one bothered the little white boy. the winos would even tell me about good fishing spots. a few years ago I took my son to walk the river and show him the fishing spots. my favorite place had changed.it was a homeless jungle populated by Hispanic people. there were death dolls hanging every where. we backed out of there very slowly, scared to death. then further down the river, about 2 miles, behind the local paper, there were more homeless people trying to catch food using hand line with a beer can bobber, and a can tab hook. I gave them some hooks and bobbers and bait, but they were desperate and dangerous. I did not turn my back.
then there is the kid that raped a girl in the school hallway, and from my yard I can see the pill dealers house, the crack dealers house, and heroin dealer is around the corner. yet I can t even find a joint to smoke.
mark, its worse in most places. I see it everyday
B.L.E. All gunpowder just burns unless it is packed and contained enough to build lots of pressure. Fortunately I was smart enough not to try anything like making pipe bombs! I was content with stinky smoke bombs.
you must live pretty far from the mean streets to have that view mark, perhaps the cities have gotten better, which given their population would explain the crime numbers, but rural and small town America has gone to hell.you have no idea how much worse things have gotten.
Yes, the cities have definitely gotten much better. NYC used to be the Wild West back in the late '70s; DC was mostly “a place you didn’t go.” My sister has a nice job and lives in a fancy apartment building adjacent to Meridian park in DC. This used to be part drug den, part garbage dump.
My mom and I accompanied my sister through North DC; my mom spent a lot of time saying stuff like, “I wouldn’t dare go here back in the '60s” and “This is where the girls used to trick!” Now it’s all fancy restaurants.
So, yes, I’d agree that (violent) crime is down. I also think the US is undergoing a sea change in where they live, coming back to the cities. (BTW, this leads to stuff like protests in Harlem about renters getting priced out of the neighborhood).