re: Letting kids walk to/from school. Is the world really that much more unsafe?

yea in general the US is a much much safer place than the mid 70s thru late 90s. Used to be gang wars on the nightly news daily in LA, full on shootouts.

difference is we are exposed to it a lot more due to the internet, 24 hour news cycle and our phones capturing it. Used to be you only heard rumors.....now you see straight up video of the whole shoot out. Even small towns are much safer now, but our perception is that it isnt. The reason is we now hear about the crimes almost immediately instead of it being hidden in the seedy part of town.


now I would argue it has gotten more unsafe to walk to school in most cases though due to traffic, distracted driving and distracted children on their bikes or walking.

but violent crime is down big time pretty much everywhere.

NYC looked like this on Manhattan in the 70s, not all but much of it did.








I mean Baltimore literally looked like the Wire in many places near downtown

Nola housing projects looked like this but way worse in real life in the 80/90s. Desire was a literal hell hole

We had a ditch right across the street from elementary school in our neighborhood we would meet before school and after. Fishing for crawdads, fighting, and just all-around good times growing up.

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It depends on the location of the school, distance from the house, and overall safety of the neighborhood

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I think you also need to look at which areas of the country embrace neighborhood schools rather than bussing kids from transfer point to transfer point before they reach their school.

I hated riding the bus in elementary and middle school. Would rather ride my bike or walk, which my parents were fine with. Of course my dumb arse would occasionally ride my bike to school then walk home, so I couldn't go out and ride my bike with everyone else in the neighborhood. Maybe I should have ridden the short bus.

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The world is probably more safe. With all the cameras on phones, businesses, ring cameras, cell phone cameras, traffic cameras, cell phone tower pings, etc... I think it would be pretty difficult to randomly abduct a child on the street, throw it in a van, drive off, and not get caught.

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This is correct.

But the world is not “More Safe”.

Back in the day when everybody had 5+ kids they were more expendable


Nowadays people marry 35 year olds and have to pay a bunch of ivf doctors to have one sickly test tube kid

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I blame the true crime wave of podcasts/shows, the increasing surveillance state (everyone has cameras, cell phones, etc), and the internet.

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This is the one.

Issue where I live is no sidewalks, so kids are walking on the road or riding bikes. With people unable to put their cell phone down while driving it's dangerous. At least in the 90's and 00's people were only changing the radio station or putting in a new CD.

When I was a kid I walked to school every single day, regardless of weather, uphill, both ways, with popcorn boxes inside my shoes to cover the holes.