Tom GorenMar 26
Goseg Train Thread

There is a common myth that "cities are dangerous" while suburbanites don't even let their kids ride bikes in their own neighborhoods bc they're so dangerous bc of cars and everyone knows it.

Cities are safer than suburbs and they are lying to you about it.

Mar 24 at 3:07pmWeb
Show threadJon RenautMar 24
@wvistheduck the problem solving we did on our bikes I'm sure contributed invaluably to my life as an adult. The bike route between my house and my best middle school friend's involved carrying your bike along a 8" radius pipe over the swampy edges of a Chesapeake Bay creek
Show threadJon RenautMar 24
@wvistheduck we made that work because the alternative was a giant hill with too many cars
Show threadthick but spreadable Mar 24
@wvistheduck I'm lucky I grew up in a neighborhood without a lot of through traffic so I was able to ride my bike relatively safely
Show threadDressToKILTMar 26

@wvistheduck "there's so much crime!"

Yes and one murder in your podunk little town instantly makes your murder rate higher than Chicago. You're not scared of crime, you're scared of having to interact with minorities.

Show threadDavidM_yegMar 26

@wvistheduck

All the pearl clutching panic over things like social media and the impact of the pandemic on kids, but we can’t look at this monumental change and its concomitant loss of autonomy and even bring ourselves to recognize the huge impact this has on children…

because cars.

Show threadAdrian Riskin Mar 26

@wvistheduck

Parents not letting kids ride bikes is bad enough, but this isn't entirely a problem of individual parental choices. Even when parents do want to give their kids the kind of freedom that was absolutely routine 50 years ago the cops will prevent it.

E.g. parents who let their kids walk less than a mile unsupervised or let a teenager babysit younger kids are subject to arrest and ongoing harassment.

https://www.freerangekids.com/free-range-kids-brittany-patterson-and-arresting-moms-whose-kids-take-a-walk/

https://reason.com/2022/02/08/melissa-henderson-babysit-covid-arrest-blairsville/

https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/1997/s97a0300-1.html

Free-Range Kids, Brittany Patterson, and Arresting Moms Whose Kids Take a Walk - Free-Range Kids

My thoughts on the Brittany Patterson case, which I was the first to report. (I’ve been having trouble with my FRK blog distribution lately. Sorry for the delay in getting you this!) Brittany Patterson had to take one of her four children to a medical appointment, and her youngest son, 10-year-old Soren, was going to

Free-Range Kids
Show threadGoseg Train ThreadMar 26

@AdrianRiskin Oh 💯! I don't blame individual parents at all - biking in car-centric suburbs is wildly dangerous!

I blame the media and the right wingers/moderates that gleefully spread the lie that cities are dangerous and it's safer to live in car sprawl suburbs. Car sprawl is anti-social and atomizing and therefore it benefits the Right and the powerful to have more Americans living in it. 🚩

Show threadJe ne comprends pasMar 26
@wvistheduck It's easy to point fingers at The Other in the city, because that's not 'us', it's 'them'. Recognising the danger of the suburbs would entail recognising the source of that danger - 'us' - the suburban dwellers themselves. No-one wants to engage with their own responsibility.
Show threadJigme DatseMar 27
@wvistheduck It's pretty rural here (at least in terms of total population, and proximity to population), and I'd say it's pretty dangerous on the streets. People are driving by, at high speeds, on narrow streets, with big vehicles. I don't much like going out even walking, and biking I feel I have less control, so don't even consider it. I haven't really felt that I was likely to get run down in any of the cities I've lived in. Montreal was the closest, and it was like 1 or 2 incidents over the space of 12 months living there.