10 ms·

The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

265 points by trevin 2y ago

gizajob 2y ago
I looked at the author’s Google map view of the 2 miles they couldn’t walk to school, and the enormous grassed area next to the road would have meant I’d be walking that quite happily in the UK.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  The US has a lot of 4ft+ hood height pick up trucks with drivers on their phone. Basically, all the cars are heavier, higher, and cause more damage. Although, that specific picture’s grassy area is sufficiently large that there is room to walk far away from the cars.
  - lsllc 2y ago
    You don't need a pickup truck to be on the phone! It's truly shocking to see just how many (usually speeding!) drivers are on their phones on the highway and elsewhere.
  - toast0 2y ago
    We used to have smaller pick up trucks, but they were eliminated by fuel efficiency rules that require larger trucks. :P
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      I don’t buy that. People like to sit higher than others, and be in a bigger vehicle. It’s a power/status thing. That is why an SUV is chosen over a minivan.
- neuroelectron 2y ago
  Right. I walked home from school every day and it was about 4 miles through farm fields and along country roads with blind corners.
  - GordonS 2y ago
    See here, and deer were hit regularly on the 4m road I walked... but even as a kid I recognised it was kind of dangerous, and I wouldn't want my own kids to do the same.
  - switch007 2y ago
    4 miles? Luxury. I used to dream of walking just 4 miles to school. I had to walk SIXTEEN miles in the wet, cold snow AND pay teacher for permission to come to school! (edit: It's the Four Yorkshireman sketch. A joke, people...)
    - gizajob 2y ago
      School?!? Well fiddledeedee which luxury part of Yorkshire are you from? When I were a lad I used to walk sixteen miles just for a kick up the arse and then have to walk home again to work under t’spinning machine at t’mill for the other 14 hours of the day.
- danielbln 2y ago
  Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) but that country road with ample green space left and right? It's fine. Would benefit from sidewalks and bike lane of course, but the author makes it sound like there is a steep cliff left and right of the road.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) As children in such a situation, we would have a lot of fun as pedestrians to be a nuisance to the cars that drive on the road, too. :-) Having this perspective, I rather think that the reason why sidewalks are built is because of the complaints of car drivers.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      As someone who has done a bunch of long distance walks in the UK, I’ve encountered any number of relatively rural or small town roads with no shoulders along walls or hedgerows that are at least as scary as a pedestrian as anything I’ve encountered in the US.
      - gizajob 2y ago
        And yet you’re still with us. Jumping onto the wall or into a hedge is part of the fun.
        ghaff 2y ago
        It's not very safe if you can't get off a curvy road with no shoulder, especially in poor visibility. You're probably OK as a bet as a sometimes thing but not something I'd, have especially a kid, do on a daily basis. One reason I didn't learn to ride a bike as a kid because that basically described the road our house was on and fatalities associated with kids riding bikes wasn't rare.
        mitthrowaway2 2y ago
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  It does look pretty nice, although in the mud the kids might prefer to walk on the unlit pavement where the trucks probably drive really really fast. Plenty of space to build a separated bike path for minuscule cost, though.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  During nice weather, surely, but it might be very unpleasant when raining. When I hear these stories about how children in USA go to school, I am always astonished. In Europe, my parents took me to the school one single time, for the first school day, when I was 6 years old. Everyday after that I have gone there and come back alone, for a walk of about one mile and a half. Several years later, I continued my studies at a more distant school, to which I was going alone using the public transportation of the city, by bus, the same as most of my colleagues. Even during the 1st grade (i.e. at 6 to 7 years old) any child would have considered very shameful to be brought to the school by their parents, as an indication that they would have been somehow helpless or handicapped.
  - gizajob 2y ago
    “Nice weather” /= UK
    - bluGill 2y ago
      True, but "bad weather" /= UK as well. There is a large spectrum, and UK mostly sits as just a little worse than nice.
      - gizajob 2y ago
        Shhhh you’ll ruin our reputation.
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  Rural property owners in the US are somewhat likely to shoot first and ask questions about trespassers only later. In some parts of the country the Road is the only obviously public land. (Even that can't be taken for granted sometimes, as private streets exist in some areas, too.)
  - wendyshu 2y ago
    How many kids walking to or from school have been shot by rural landowners? What you're describing is illegal.
    - WorldMaker 2y ago
      It varies from state to state. See "Castle Doctrine" and its variants, including the worst "Stand Your Ground" ones. The US has more pockets of dystopia than are necessarily obvious.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - bluGill 2y ago
    No they are not. That is what happens in the movies, but in reality those people are just like anyone else - mostly nice people. Even stand your ground laws which allow you to shoot without asking questions only apply in specific situations and are unlikely to apply (though without specific details I cannot say for sure)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - WorldMaker 2y ago
      https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/annual-gun-violence-data https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutio... Especially noted: > Overall, rural counties had the highest rate of gun deaths.
delichon 2y ago
We can just wait for this problem to go away as robocars becomes the norm. We'll look back on the primitive times when kids couldn't just click a button or whisper an instruction for a ride like anyone else.
- drunner 2y ago
  500 manually driven cars and 500 robocars take the same space. Building schools, cities, and communities in the US that are pedestrian based is the only real solution. The author summarizes as "We need to thicken up our places, slow down cars, and install pedestrian or biking infrastructure" which I couldn't agree with more.
- trgn 2y ago
  I'm not in disagreement, robot cars would be awesome, but why do we need scifi technology here in the usa to solve something that is already a solved problem the world over. It really is a mental problem more than anything else. The inability to imagine a virtuous public realm welcoming to children, conjure its value in one's mind eye, and commit to the necessary material changes.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > can just wait for this problem to go away as robocars becomes the norm I live in a well-to-do community where many kids are chauffeured to school. The problem isn't just the parents' wasted time. It's the congestion and lack of agency this behaviour bestows on children. Head to head, I'd bet the kid who can navigate themselves to and from school outcompetes the one chauffered in a robotaxi in novel environments.
- skyyler 2y ago
  We need busses. If it has to be techy-flashy, would it satisfy you if the bus was self-driving?
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Busses are slow as snot in many cases, because the routes are insane. We can walk to school and see the bus when we leave the house and easily beat it by many minutes. (Busses being slow and routes taking long is probably a design feature, allowing schools to let out at 3PM but parents to not have to be home until 5PM or later). But the real final solution won't be robocars, it'll be robokids. Then if you lose one you can just get a replacement.
giarc 2y ago
I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they will just find their parent. That's how my kids school works and there is no traffic jam.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  That's fucking ridiculous.
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    What’s funny is that a lot of modern parents think the latter option is ridiculous.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    That has to be out of the norm. I’ve only heard of kindergarteners needing a guardian.
  - charlie0 2y ago
    What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them and they were forced to do something asinine like that as CYA.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them I'd almost bet nobody sued them. (I'll extend: I'd be surprised if a parent has ever won such a case.) An idiot parent made a stink at a PTA meeting and nobody could be bothered going head to head with Karen.
      - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
        First of all another parent making a stink at PTA is a genuine situation to want to avoid. The facebook smear campaigns I've seen against teachers are incredible. Also, they absolutely have been sued, and if I remember I'll link a handful later when home. Or the even more fun phenomenon is other parents calling CPS on parents when they witness their children walking home unattended, and that report is actually pursued and adjudicated.
aklemm 2y ago
Well that headline sums it up. After 10 years of dealing with it and wondering "how the f did we get to this point", it's satisfying to hear it called what it is. A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sleep and all the rest. Pay for the buses! Build the greenways! Normalize walking! And stop worrying about abductions for the love of gawd!
- mmmlinux 2y ago
  "he decided" is probably one of the issues here. back in the day it would have been "this is what your doing now kid"
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Every generation grows and becomes better than the last*.
    - colecut 2y ago
      /me says "ok boomer" in gen-z
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        * Certain exclusions may apply
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    You're right. We would have been mocked "It's a mile and a half, I'm not picking you up when you have two perfectly good legs."
  - xmprt 2y ago
    There's a difference when everyone is walking home (so you often walk home with a few friends who live nearby) vs being alone walking home.
tslocum 2y ago
Does this article really need a visual aid of cars waiting in a line, let alone a sloppy AI generated visual aid?
- blitzar 2y ago
  The concept in the article is foreign to nearly the entire planet.
Mistletoe 2y ago
It’s awful. Big long line where I live and it used to be handled by one school bus and kids walking home. Imagine the waste of human productive time, fuel, etc. I’m always astounded this many people don’t have a job to be at at 3pm.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Mayhap part of it is the "modern smoke break" - the people picking up like to have an excuse to take a break from work in the early afternoon.
hk1337 2y ago
I used to walk or take the bus, even in elementary school. I am not sure at what point parents decided they must take their kids to school. We did have parents dropping kids off and it was busy but not like it is now. I know then, at least to me, there was a sort of an air about about seeing kids being picked up or dropped off because they didn't have to ride the bus. Maybe that's it, parents gave in to not wanting their kids to feel less about themselves because they had to ride the bus?
zip1234 2y ago
Great article. It wouldn't be that difficult for schools and cities to encourage walking or biking. There are lots of easy things that could be done. My daughter's school doesn't properly clear the sidewalks during winter. The giant parking lot is always immaculate though. They actually renovated and rerouted traffic to make it less safe for pedestrians. My daughter's friend was hit in a crosswalk (with a crossing guard!) by a parent leaving school after dropping her kid off. No penalty to the driver.
ryandrake 2y ago
An odd choice of dates in the charts: 1969, 2009, 2017, 2022. 40 years between the first two and less than ten between the other ones. I would have liked to see more uniform spacing between the first two to understand whether the change across those 40 years was gradual. Our family suffers this insanity, too. This is one of the few things my spouse absolutely refuses to budge on: she won't let our child walk, bicycle, or even take the school bus to school because of vague "danger" that the news media is pumping into her. School is only 3 miles away and we live in a peaceful rural-to-suburban area. The kid could walk that distance at midnight and not be even remotely at risk. No facts, statistics or reasoning works.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  It's not always easy to find the data you want. When you're writing a blog post like this, you do research and find the studies that you can, published when they were.
- graypegg 2y ago
  I totally understand the anxiety. If you get "DANGER!" pumped into you constantly, it's going to be hard to rationalize your way out of that. Have you two ever tried walking along the road at around the same time? A calm walk along the same path your kids would be taking would put me at ease about the situation if I was in the same spot.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  I know those gaps are often due to the data coming from different sources and it's not always possible to normalize it and what not, but I'm always super suspicious when they do that. Also when you see results that are like 1953-1986, like maybe the results from 1952 and 1987 invalidate whatever point they want to make, so they used only the section that helps their case.
- jisnsm 2y ago
  [flagged]
yieldcrv 2y ago
At many schools, the school bus was an embarrassment too, or at least some routes as neighborhood demographics changed The most rambunctious, violent, harrowing and underpoliced part of the day Not offering a solution, just an observation
user3939382 2y ago
I frequently contemplate the cumulative pollution of all these cars idling in every town across the country 5 days a week twice a day.
legitster 2y ago
Unfortunately we are one of those families. The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.
- supertrope 2y ago
  The post-Covid labor market shift has raised the price of school bus drivers beyond what schools are willing to pay for.
- hk1337 2y ago
  > It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back. I don't know how your bus driver would handle it but even back in the 80s, some parents would drive their kids to the bus stop and let them wait in the car until the bus came. As they got older, like 5th or 6th grade, they would be taught to dress warm for the wait.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back 1st grade is probably too young to wait alone. But by 3rd grade I'd expect a child to be able to bundle themselves up.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Putting the bus stop on a major road without adequate place to stand is a problem. But a 5 year old is totally capable of waiting for a bus, given the appropriate location to do so. Even more so in a typical suburb, where there's likely several of them waiting at the same place (when I was a kid, we walked half a block to the corner and waiting in a group of ~5-~15 kids).
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  Our school system wouldn't send buses if you were within two miles of the school. We were (seriously) 1.99 miles away, so we had to drive our kids back and forth.
bluGill 2y ago
The pickup point should be 1km from the school unless you have a doctors note. Kids need to walk that much or more anyway for health.
mcbishop 2y ago
We park on the other side of a city park from my daughter's school. ...The five minute walk thru the park together is a highlight of my day.
nancyminusone 2y ago
Sorry, but this one's on the parents. My mom would never put up with driving us in every day. It was either take the bus or walk, you lazy kid.
lvl155 2y ago
Counter point: I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived. I can go on and on and on. I had to learn to walk an extra 20-30 minutes to avoid these situations. I will never let my kids walk home in 2025. Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a drive-through. In most cases, it is a choice. You can opt to park like a normal person and walk up. This article is absurd. Most of these parents are too lazy to walk 5 minutes. I’ve seen parents show up 40 minutes to be first in queue…just so they don’t have to get out of their cars. Makes zero sense.
- vidarh 2y ago
  If I lived in the kind of third world hellhole where this was a realistic scenario, I'd leave the country.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    You don't even need to leave the country, as these locations are very specific parts of cities in the country.
  - lvl155 2y ago
    It’s the US. People on here are so sheltered.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      The vast majority of the US is not like this. Yes, there are some (generally poor, urban) areas with crime problems. The average middle class town or suburb? Walking to school would be safe, if we simply built sidewalks instead of 6 lane highways.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      The majority of the US is absolutely not like this. You keep accusing other people of living in a bubble, but you're indexing your entire experience on to anecdotes of where you grew up as an individual experience.
mooreds 2y ago
This is why I was adamant that my kids took the school bus when it is an option. Even though my family has the flexible schedule to handle dropping kids via car, by using the bus system I help support the community and others who might not have that flexibility. Plus, the school bus is one of the first places a kid might be without (much) adult supervision. A tremendous growth opportunity, where you learn how to deal with discomfort, difference and drama.
willmeyers 2y ago
I live in a relatively residential neighborhood in NYC next to a school (outside of the congestion zone). The morning dropoffs and afternoon pickups are insane. It literally causes a gridlock for a couple hours in a part of the neighborhood that has like 4 intersections. Somehow we have to get back to the days when parents trusted the community that their kid is going to get home safe, otherwise this nonsense is never going to end.
- otoburb 2y ago
  Except that many NYC public schools have yellow buses that park in the narrow streets during pickup or dropoff which are the cause for 20 minutes of gridlock along those streets. "A couple of hours" seems to be rather unusual.
furyofantares 2y ago
The article makes a lot of great points, but looks to miss that kids are enrolled in a lot of after school activities these days. I was never enrolled in any as a kid and never really expected for my kid to be, because I thought parents were the motivating factor for kids to get into a bunch of activities, but IME they aren't. My kid loves her activities and picking her up to shuttle her directly to it is a lot quicker than using a bus or walking.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  The article mentions Japan as a comparison, where kids are also enrolled in a lot of after-school activities. They tend to get there on their own.
rattlesnakedave 2y ago
Surely behavior of children on a busses plays _some_ role in this decision. Not sure how they would even gather stats on this but busses in my youth were total zoos. Further, schools near me won't allow many children to walk home even within a safe walking distance with parental consent for (and I quote) "liability reasons". Absurd.
- bombcar 2y ago
  You have to enact protection for the schools from that, or their insurance goes insane (or refuses to be available for any money). Where I am the school line is mainly to prevent kids from running between the cars; anyone who has been authorized can just be let free and walk home - some of whom just walk a block to where their parent is waiting.
kkylin 2y ago
My kids' school used to let parents into the yard during dropoff and pickup. It was wonderful: a time for the kids to play with their friends and the parents to mingle and catch up. Now we have the car dropoff/pickup line. I'm for "everyone park and walk your kid into school" or "let kids go home by themselves if it's safe to do so" [0]. The car pickup and dropoff is the absolute worst. [0] Our current bike route from home to school isn't optimal -- too many busy streets where drivers routinely run reds. That's a rant for another day...
skybrian 2y ago
The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far? I went to school in a semi-rural school district, one of the largest in the state by area. I just checked Google Maps and the high school is 13 miles away, 16 minutes by car (much of it highway), and maybe a half hour by school bus if I remember correctly. It could be a bit tedious, but it wasn't a terrible commute by any means. > Parents are not simply choosing to drive their children to school because it’s fun to sit in a long line. It is becoming more of a necessity because schools are more spread out than before, or at least families are living further from their schools. Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas. They work for all ages, in any weather where the school is open at all.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far? The buckets were chosen because 3 miles is farther than you'd reasonably expect kids to be able to walk to and from school every day. They say this right under the chart. It's not helpful to do chest-thumping to compare whose farthest away from school when the entire point of the section is that 80% of people fall into that bucket. > Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas. Again, you've missed the point of the article. In cities, students are spread out in all directions. It's not feasible for a bus to loop around an entire city to pick everyone up when they're spread all over.
  - skybrian 2y ago
    You’re right, I don’t get it. Why is it expected that kids should be able to walk to school? Seems like that’s a pretty blinkered view by someone who never leaves the city? In a rural district, very few kids can do that, and that’s why there are buses for everyone else. Also, why wouldn’t school buses work in a denser area? That’s why they have multiple school buses doing multiple routes. All the usual arguments for mass transit should apply for school buses, too. Density should make providing bus service easier, not harder.
trevin 2y ago
Thinking through where I've lived -- a lot of the original school buildings built in circa 1950 were more in city center. The article touches on the move of schools to the outskirts of town as a cost savings measure but I think the opposite may be true. As population and (perceived) facilities increased, the schools built new buildings in farmland or other wide open areas on the outskirts of town to have more room for stuff like stadiums, huge auditoriums, bigger playgrounds. The land may be cheaper but the new high schools are almost more like college campuses vs. stately buildings in the middle of town. There's an appetite for more and we've relocated schools to make more room not save money.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Schools relocated as parents moved to the suburbs. The schools saw this coming and built schools near those new houses. Schools sometimes see things coming and buy farmland 10-20 years in advance so that when the suburb expands they have the land to build on, but the schools are not built until it is obvious that the parents are coming.
me_smith 2y ago
My mom walked me to school until I was in 4th grade. She was a single mom and needed to work, so she decided to let me walk to and from school from then on. I made friends on that walk. 30+ years later, I am still friends with many of them even though we live hours away from each other. I'm not a parent, so I don't know what I don't know; but, I've observed so many kids being shuffled between school, events, "play dates" where it is harder to build deep relationships outside of the parent's sight. Everything is being curated to "ensure" the kids are safe or on the "right" path. I understand that we live in a different world, but I really do feel that its to the detriment of the kids.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  There's an entire section and even a chart in the article that explains why this is different now In 1969 only about 30% of kids lived too far away from school for walking to be a realistic option. In 2009 (and today) that numbers is around 80%. Walking to and from school is great if you can do it. Most people cannot do it.
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    Seriously - I'd love to have my kids walk but we are 22 miles away (in a rural area).
    - me_smith 2y ago
      I grew up in a suburban area so I am out of touch with the rural experience. Because the article is comparing the past with the present, I am curious what parents were doing in the 90s in your area? And, what are parents doing nowadays? I'm assuming, either car or bus. And I can't imagine that would have changed since the 90s unless there used to be a school much closer.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      When I grew up in a rural area I walked 1/3 mile to meet the school bus. Is that not still the typical experience?
cyberax 2y ago
[flagged]
richwater 2y ago
Helicopter parents exist because public trust is completely eroded. I don't want to blame it on diversity but the example provided in the article is a homogenous-culture society with high trust.
- anonfordays 2y ago
  Gigantic tank-like vehicles with worse line of sight then actual tanks, insane levels of crime that are rampant all over the US compared to Japan, etc. Make tank-like trucks and SUVs illegal to manufacturer is a good start. It's going to be tough to compete with homogenous first-world countries on culture and crime.
newuser94303 2y ago
What about the people that report parents to the police for endangering their children by allowing them to walk/bike to school?
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  From the article: > It’s not just a message to parents, it’s the broader society.[...] A mom was recently arrested for letting her 10-year-old son walk into town. These types of incidents only fuel the school car pickup culture
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  If the child is not in any actual danger, then people who call emergency services or police need to be cited for wasting resources. Busybodies seem to call because of "what if" things. That child's actual danger is the busybody.
  - appleorchard46 2y ago
    Apparently a child being alone constitutes being in danger. From the article [0] [0] https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year-old-walk-alone-to-town/ https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year...
  - bluGill 2y ago
    > If the child is not in any actual danger, then people who call emergency services or police need to be cited for wasting resources. As a mandatory reporter, my instructions are if there is any possibility report and let the experts figure it out. There is no harm to me if I report and nothing is found. However if they discover something and find that I was in contact with the kid in question they will investigate: if there is anything that I should have seen I'll be arrested for not reporting it.
    - RandomBacon 2y ago
      I appreciate that mandatory reporting laws exist for evidence of abuse, and to an extent, suspicion of abuse; but does your training say that children left alone less than a few hours, is abuse or is suspicious by itself, and needs to be reported? There is always the possibility for anything, so that cannot be the bar.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nextdoorsv 2y ago
Californians should read this too: (TLDR: It's Prop 13's fault) https://www.kqed.org/news/11980715/why-dont-more-bay-area-kids-ride-school-buses https://www.kqed.org/news/11980715/why-dont-more-bay-area-ki... >California has fewer school buses than in other parts of the country. A survey conducted by the Federal Highway Administration found that nationally, almost 40% of school-aged kids ride a school bus. In California, that number is only 8%. >Like so many questions related to school funding and services, the answer to Winters’ question has roots in the passage of Proposition 13
- nextdoorsv 2y ago
  I think people would be surprised that there's school districts where the median home value is $1.5M, but the district can't afford any school bus service except for federally mandated school buses for special ed kids. For those familiar with the Bay Area - Fremont: https://fremontunified.org/about/business-services/transportation/elimination-of-home-to-school-transportation-services/ https://fremontunified.org/about/business-services/transport...
- nullc 2y ago
  Many-- most?-- states have property tax rates capped for your primary residence. Otherwise property values going up can push you out of your home. Prop 13 goes further-- but many of the communities with the low tax income are precisely the ones full of single family homes rather than expansive commercial/industrial areas. California ranks 19th in the country in per student spending -- so it's not wildly out of place compared to the rest of the country. Moreover, Florida bus rates are at 30% and it ranks near the very bottom in per-student spend. I think you should look elsewhere for the low bus rates than funding.
blobbers 2y ago
This is the kind of article that needs to get into national culture. We gotta change the way we live. I don't know how to get it to happen, but we need more people doing this.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  People need to stop being fucking pussies and actually engage with dumb arguments. It seems people these days are so conflict averse that no one ever speaks up. "We all have our opinions!" Yeah, and sometimes they are stupid.
  - blobbers 2y ago
    Yeah, but even things like biking to school. Nothing to do with conflict. Currently we're a 39 minute walk from school; a little long for a kid at age 8. We're like a 10 minute drive, in traffic with lights etc, and I think basically a 10 minute bike ride. There isn't a good biking system because the roads are set up like a grid, and there's no walking path through it. I think for biking culture to thrive you need bike only or bike/ped paths, otherwise you end up having to bike on busy streets or stop at many intersections. I'm going to try to organize something like a mini bike bus in my neigborhood.
ZekeSulastin 2y ago
I didn’t understand at the time how much of a privilege it was that I could walk to school where I grew up (with crossing guards for the elementary schoolers, even!) and more importantly that my parents encouraged it, even if it was a bit of a hike to middle and high school without a bike. Unfortunately we moved during high school and lived something like 15 miles from the new school; at least there was a bus.
WillAdams 2y ago
Like many societal issues, support for bike transport would be one way to address this. To help support that, it should be expected that on the first day of school, police officers will ride bikes along all the routes students are expected to cover --- to help support that, bring back truant officers and put them on bicycles.
hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
Not much to do for most of the parents, TBH, especially if you want to get into a good school. Me? I picked the public elementary school 10 minutes of walk away instead of the private one that is 20+ minutes of driving. I don't want everyone in the household gets frustrated pretty much every Mon-Fri. Secondary school is going to be a bit of issue. We do have one that is adjacent to the said elementary school but it is not very good. But then my son would be 11 years old by then so hopefully he can just take the bus.
mclau156 2y ago
Putting so much emphasis on cars, and being in cars is a national embarrassment
AStonesThrow 2y ago
The weirdest part of my school day was wandering out of the recess lot and trying to find Mom’s car every day. A lot of my classmates were bused in from 15 miles away and we were second-class “townies” but yet, we lived outside the parochial territory. Fifth Estate, I suppose. Once Dad bought a new car and surprised us by not picking us up in the one we recognized?! Around 5th grade I had some sort of trauma-drama on the soccer field, needed to call in Mom for a pickup. I didn’t know what a busy-tone sounded like despite figuring out the payphone on campus. I held the receiver to my ear for 10 minutes anxiously hoping Mom would answer. I believe the rare school bus rides were field trips, and once my friend and I were in the rear, frantically waving and smiling at every other motorist to see how they’d respond, and we failed to cause any accidents I feel it was a curse on Mom to put so many miles on Soccer Mom Car. Parents couldn’t hardly wait for our maturity and licensing!
wavemode 2y ago
> Likewise, a mom was recently arrested for letting her 10-year-old son walk into town. That linked article is incredible to me (considering how much I used to walk around at that age). If our culture becomes so backwards that you will actually be criminalized for letting your kids move around independently, then of course we'll be doomed to car pickup lines forever.
- twiddling 2y ago
  Had to dig around for this but it is quite illuminating: https://www.freerangekids.com/how-children-lost-the-right-to-roam-in-just-4-generations/ https://www.freerangekids.com/how-children-lost-the-right-to...
  - rsanek 2y ago
    looks like that is a bit of blogspam, ultimate source is https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children...
appleorchard46 2y ago
I just want to highlight this link in the article, about a mother who was arrested because her son walked less than a mile into town (population 370) on his own [0]. Arrested. For putting him in danger. What a mess. [0] https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year-old-walk-alone-to-town/ https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year...
samgranieri 2y ago
I was driven to school during preschool, kindergarten, and part of grade school, biked or walked in junior high or high school. My kid is in preschool and I drive him or walk him to school. He'll be able to walk to junior high and high school, and will probably take the bus to grade school. I don't mind the pickup line right now.
alistairSH 2y ago
100% agree with the title. I live ~1 mile from the local school complex (primary, middle, high all share a gigantic piece of land, though are separate full-size schools). You literally don't have to cross a street to get there from my house - it's all neighborhood walking paths and there's a short underpass at the one road. Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. There's a bus, which isn't the end of the world. Except in the time it takes to wait for the bus, you could walk most of the way to school. And 1/4 of the parents drive their kids anyway. It's completely absurd. Of course, I walk the ~1 mile to my office in the other direction and most of my coworkers think I'm a loon. So, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Americans are just hard-wired to drive even the shortest distances. We've done such a piss-poor job with urban planning and transit design that 3+ generations of Americans think anything but a car is unthinkable (literally, I don't think it crosses their minds).
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. According to who? Reading these comments reminds me that America is a big place and experiences are very different from one location to the next. My closest school has hundreds of kids walking to and from through all the neighborhoods if you drive by during morning or afternoon hours. My last in-office job had numerous people with 20-40 minute walks as part of their commute (except in rain/winter). We had people who routinely biked 10+ miles to the office. It's not "Americans are lazy". It's the people you're around.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    According to the school. They don't like releasing kids on their own for some reason. neighbors wanted their son to walk home alone and the school said the kid could either take the bus, or a parent could show up and walk him out. Yes, for the same ~1 mile walk I describe above, that's all paved paths in a very safe neighborhood outside DC (Reston VA). Not all of Reston is like this, but out are is VERY walkable (~1 mile to schools, ~1 mile to shopping, ~1.5-2 miles to the town center and Metro station).
- gizajob 2y ago
biophysboy 2y ago
Our infrastructure in general is a national embarrassment. I'm more pessimistic on this category than anything else. The best possible future I can imagine in the USA, transportation-wise, is not having to hold the steering wheel during a robo traffic jam.
drewg123 2y ago
This problem is over for me, as my son has graduated, but part of the problem is NIMBY'ified suburban roads that dead-end rather than connecting neighborhoods (in order to cut down on neighborhood traffic). My son's school was about 250 meters from his mom's house. Due to the NIMBY way the neighborhoods were built, he would have had to ride his bike or walk 2.5 miles on busy roads w/o bike lanes to get to his mom's house. The direct route was 2 dead end roads that should have connected the neighborhoods together. But instead, there was ~30m of dense forest marked with "no trespassing" signs. This meant that me and his mom had to wait in the school line rather than him being able to walk/bike to and from school. Even when I had custody, I would have much rather picked him up from his mom's house than school because the line was miserable. I was so happy when he got his license and was able to drive himself.
- hommelix 2y ago
  In the Netherlands they build the neighborhood like that, but at the dead end of the street is a small path for walking/biking. So driving to school would take 2 km, but walking only 500 m.
  - drewg123 2y ago
    Yes, this would have been so much smarter. But in this case, they apparently sold extra large lots to the surrounding houses, and made no provisions for pedestrians. Welcome to the USA.
aantix 2y ago
Raising children is no longer a communal effort. If you let your kid out roaming, walking home from school, and the child causes a minor issue, you get the wrath of "Why aren't you watching your kid?"??? So we've developed this culture around ensuring that the child is accounted for at all hours of the day. Drop off, pickup from school, included.
linuxftw 2y ago
Fortunately, there's homeschool. In the amount of time it takes someone to load up the kids into the car, drive to school, wait in these long lines, and then do the reverse, that should be enough instructor-led time for an entire homeschooling curriculum. The best part is, you won't have to subject your children to marxists and people that look like literal clowns that fell face-first into a tackle box.
rdsubhas 2y ago
Sometimes I truly wonder how the US is so far ahead in innovation and efficiency. This is unthinkable, how many hours of driving to and fro + this queue each day. Here I am, in Germany, my kid goes to school by himself since second grade. Most of his classmates started to walk, bike, or take the train, bus or tram themselves at 3rd or 4th grade. Beyond 6th grade, it's considered a spoiled baby.
- nick_ 2y ago
  A huge amount of North America is designed almost exclusively for a totally car-dependent life.
thehoagie 2y ago
We live across the street from our kids elementary and middle schools. There is a sidewalk and a crosswalk to the school. Parents in our subdivision still choose to drive in because "the crosswalk is too dangerous". Schools can't afford crossing guards, county engineers claim it is an enforcement issue, police can't cover it with their limited staffing, and Republicans are banning school speeding cameras in Georgia.
- rexpop 2y ago
  New York City saw a 55% reduction in fatalities in school zones with cameras, and Oglethorpe County, Georgia reported zero accidents in a high-risk zone for three months after camera installation, compared to 1–2 daily crashes previously. Using a monthly prevention rate of 0.9–1.4 deaths[0], a ban could result in 10–17 additional fatalities annually per monitored corridor. So, after how many bonus deaths will Republicans be held liable? 0. https://ssti.us/2024/03/11/speed-cameras-lower-speeds-and-prevent-crashes-new-research-confirms/ https://ssti.us/2024/03/11/speed-cameras-lower-speeds-and-pr...
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Schools can't afford crossing guards Parents could get together and volunteer to do crossing duty or hire a private crossing guard, it probably wouldn't even cost very much.
- bluGill 2y ago
  > county engineers claim it is an enforcement issue, They are probably professional engineers who can lose their license if anyone discovered that there have long been known road designs that prevent this. It will take some research, but the law is on your side to have them dismissed for cause if enforcement is all they are relying on.
  - closeparen 2y ago
    It would violate professional standards for a traffic engineer to implement a more pedestrian-safety oriented design at an intersection before the requisite number of children have been killed to justify it.
cainxinth 2y ago
> The classic yellow school bus is a national icon. It is, but like the pickup line, it’s also a national embarrassment. Half the buses in my town are ancient and belch black smoke like a semi rolling coal.
lxe 2y ago
I think parental paranoia plays a very small role in this. If at least one thing were to change: reasonable schoolbus routes, walkability, traffic safety, public transport, then we'd see a huge uptick.
twiddling 2y ago
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children... How children lost the right to roam in four generations
ghugccrghbvr 2y ago
Moved to Germany. Put kids 4 6 in school. School sends letter home: parents, please stop driving kids to school. Walking is part of the experience. It’s the same all over Europe. The distance to school is a social choice. But in the US, kids can’t even get off a school bus without a parent waiting Fear culture and security theater
haswell 2y ago
This is a good piece that is undermined somewhat by the AI imagery. My goal isn't to just complain about AI, but I've been reflecting on how my own mental process unfolded while reading this. > Note: I used AI to create this image rather than pull one from another site without permission. I don't have kids, and while I've seen pickup lines from time to time, I have very little first-hand experience with them. So my brain reacts to the image: - Is this image a realistic representation? - If it is, I have no first-hand knowledge to verify it - If it's not, I have no way to know without going and looking for images myself - If it is, it's undermining the content by representing something real with something fake Artwork/illustrations/visualizations are often critical when communicating via text. But I think that when someone is writing about a factual matter - a real phenomenon that is occurring regularly - using fake imagery is just the wrong choice.
gist 2y ago
At the core this behavior is simply a version of social proof. Parents see what other parents do and/or kids see friends being picked up and then put pressure on their parents to do the same. Then it gets to a tipping point where it just becomes the thing that you do (and nobody thinks otherwise or wants to tell their kids they won't do this or questions it). It's also a way for a parent to think somehow they are doing the right thing and get a little enjoyment in their head (despite the time involved or wasted) 'I am a good parent'. Doesn't involve as much effort as other things a parent does (or should do) it's simple (other than the time).
CLiED 2y ago
I guess this is what they call American Exceptionalism?
cavisne 2y ago
As the author mentioned the rise of ebikes is counteracting this, however the ones popular with teens (Surrons and other similar chinese brands) require you to cut one wire to remove the speed limiter and then they can do 50MPH. The idea of common spaces in American cities largely died during & after Covid. Anything you did in public (gyms, eating out, public transport, apartment common areas) was suddenly prey to whatever idea a politician had that morning. I think we all remember walking into a restaurant with a mask on, to promptly take it off as soon as you sat down. At the same time as these guidelines were being piled on, basically all laws below murder stopped being enforced. So you had to negotiate a bus full of drug addicts shooting up and riding for free, or leave the sidewalk because it had been taken over by a tent city. Personal transport is required in America, the places with the infrastructure to avoid it dont have the capacity to govern (any big city). The places with the governing capacity (suburban, rural areas) dont have the infrastructure.
bartimus 2y ago
I came in expecting this was going to be a methodological article. Maybe better let the kids wait as opposed to the parents in their cars?
apwell23 2y ago
i live in chicago and just stared taking my son to preschool on the local El train. Would love to do that when he goes to school.
daft_pink 2y ago
The real tragedy is that people don’t let their kids walk or bike to school anymore unsupervised.
xnx 2y ago
Are any kids commuting to school by electric bike/scooter? Maybe secure storage during the school day is an issue?
jinushaun 2y ago
Car line is a choice. I park a block away and walk to the school to do the pick up. Waiting in line to avoid walking is stupid and lazy.
rurban 2y ago
> the leading cause of death for American youngsters is from car-related incidents. I've read some timed ago that drowning in swimmingpools was the leading cause of deaths for kids. So maybe the mandatory protections (fences) there did help. So more schoolbuses could help with their pickup line crisis. In Germany in our schools such pickup lines are explicitly forbidden. Kids must go by themselves (bus or bike). Helicopter parenting is frawned upon, and recent right-wing rumors in Berlin amongst silly parents about organized Rumanian abduction trucks are actively fought. Dangerous fakenews on social media, probably Russian.
xela79 2y ago
I wonder if taking your kids in your country to school by car instead of going on foot might have anything to do with child kidnapping & killings? where the police was too lame to actual find the kids and more died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_March

265 points by trevin 2y ago

I looked at the author’s Google map view of the 2 miles they couldn’t walk to school, and the enormous grassed area next to the road would have meant I’d be walking that quite happily in the UK.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
The US has a lot of 4ft+ hood height pick up trucks with drivers on their phone. Basically, all the cars are heavier, higher, and cause more damage. Although, that specific picture’s grassy area is sufficiently large that there is room to walk far away from the cars.
- lsllc 2y ago
  You don't need a pickup truck to be on the phone! It's truly shocking to see just how many (usually speeding!) drivers are on their phones on the highway and elsewhere.
- toast0 2y ago
  We used to have smaller pick up trucks, but they were eliminated by fuel efficiency rules that require larger trucks. :P
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    I don’t buy that. People like to sit higher than others, and be in a bigger vehicle. It’s a power/status thing. That is why an SUV is chosen over a minivan.
neuroelectron 2y ago
Right. I walked home from school every day and it was about 4 miles through farm fields and along country roads with blind corners.
- GordonS 2y ago
  See here, and deer were hit regularly on the 4m road I walked... but even as a kid I recognised it was kind of dangerous, and I wouldn't want my own kids to do the same.
- switch007 2y ago
  4 miles? Luxury. I used to dream of walking just 4 miles to school. I had to walk SIXTEEN miles in the wet, cold snow AND pay teacher for permission to come to school! (edit: It's the Four Yorkshireman sketch. A joke, people...)
  - gizajob 2y ago
    School?!? Well fiddledeedee which luxury part of Yorkshire are you from? When I were a lad I used to walk sixteen miles just for a kick up the arse and then have to walk home again to work under t’spinning machine at t’mill for the other 14 hours of the day.
danielbln 2y ago
Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) but that country road with ample green space left and right? It's fine. Would benefit from sidewalks and bike lane of course, but the author makes it sound like there is a steep cliff left and right of the road.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) As children in such a situation, we would have a lot of fun as pedestrians to be a nuisance to the cars that drive on the road, too. :-) Having this perspective, I rather think that the reason why sidewalks are built is because of the complaints of car drivers.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    As someone who has done a bunch of long distance walks in the UK, I’ve encountered any number of relatively rural or small town roads with no shoulders along walls or hedgerows that are at least as scary as a pedestrian as anything I’ve encountered in the US.
    - gizajob 2y ago
      And yet you’re still with us. Jumping onto the wall or into a hedge is part of the fun.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        It's not very safe if you can't get off a curvy road with no shoulder, especially in poor visibility. You're probably OK as a bet as a sometimes thing but not something I'd, have especially a kid, do on a daily basis. One reason I didn't learn to ride a bike as a kid because that basically described the road our house was on and fatalities associated with kids riding bikes wasn't rare.
      - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
It does look pretty nice, although in the mud the kids might prefer to walk on the unlit pavement where the trucks probably drive really really fast. Plenty of space to build a separated bike path for minuscule cost, though.
adrian_b 2y ago
During nice weather, surely, but it might be very unpleasant when raining. When I hear these stories about how children in USA go to school, I am always astonished. In Europe, my parents took me to the school one single time, for the first school day, when I was 6 years old. Everyday after that I have gone there and come back alone, for a walk of about one mile and a half. Several years later, I continued my studies at a more distant school, to which I was going alone using the public transportation of the city, by bus, the same as most of my colleagues. Even during the 1st grade (i.e. at 6 to 7 years old) any child would have considered very shameful to be brought to the school by their parents, as an indication that they would have been somehow helpless or handicapped.
- gizajob 2y ago
  “Nice weather” /= UK
  - bluGill 2y ago
    True, but "bad weather" /= UK as well. There is a large spectrum, and UK mostly sits as just a little worse than nice.
    - gizajob 2y ago
      Shhhh you’ll ruin our reputation.
WorldMaker 2y ago
Rural property owners in the US are somewhat likely to shoot first and ask questions about trespassers only later. In some parts of the country the Road is the only obviously public land. (Even that can't be taken for granted sometimes, as private streets exist in some areas, too.)
- wendyshu 2y ago
  How many kids walking to or from school have been shot by rural landowners? What you're describing is illegal.
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    It varies from state to state. See "Castle Doctrine" and its variants, including the worst "Stand Your Ground" ones. The US has more pockets of dystopia than are necessarily obvious.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- bluGill 2y ago
  No they are not. That is what happens in the movies, but in reality those people are just like anyone else - mostly nice people. Even stand your ground laws which allow you to shoot without asking questions only apply in specific situations and are unlikely to apply (though without specific details I cannot say for sure)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/annual-gun-violence-data https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutio... Especially noted: > Overall, rural counties had the highest rate of gun deaths.

delichon 2y ago

We can just wait for this problem to go away as robocars becomes the norm. We'll look back on the primitive times when kids couldn't just click a button or whisper an instruction for a ride like anyone else.

drunner 2y ago
500 manually driven cars and 500 robocars take the same space. Building schools, cities, and communities in the US that are pedestrian based is the only real solution. The author summarizes as "We need to thicken up our places, slow down cars, and install pedestrian or biking infrastructure" which I couldn't agree with more.
trgn 2y ago
I'm not in disagreement, robot cars would be awesome, but why do we need scifi technology here in the usa to solve something that is already a solved problem the world over. It really is a mental problem more than anything else. The inability to imagine a virtuous public realm welcoming to children, conjure its value in one's mind eye, and commit to the necessary material changes.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> can just wait for this problem to go away as robocars becomes the norm I live in a well-to-do community where many kids are chauffeured to school. The problem isn't just the parents' wasted time. It's the congestion and lack of agency this behaviour bestows on children. Head to head, I'd bet the kid who can navigate themselves to and from school outcompetes the one chauffered in a robotaxi in novel environments.
skyyler 2y ago
We need busses. If it has to be techy-flashy, would it satisfy you if the bus was self-driving?
- bombcar 2y ago
  Busses are slow as snot in many cases, because the routes are insane. We can walk to school and see the bus when we leave the house and easily beat it by many minutes. (Busses being slow and routes taking long is probably a design feature, allowing schools to let out at 3PM but parents to not have to be home until 5PM or later). But the real final solution won't be robocars, it'll be robokids. Then if you lose one you can just get a replacement.

giarc 2y ago

I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they will just find their parent. That's how my kids school works and there is no traffic jam.

bongodongobob 2y ago
That's fucking ridiculous.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  What’s funny is that a lot of modern parents think the latter option is ridiculous.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  That has to be out of the norm. I’ve only heard of kindergarteners needing a guardian.
- charlie0 2y ago
  What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them and they were forced to do something asinine like that as CYA.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them I'd almost bet nobody sued them. (I'll extend: I'd be surprised if a parent has ever won such a case.) An idiot parent made a stink at a PTA meeting and nobody could be bothered going head to head with Karen.
    - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      First of all another parent making a stink at PTA is a genuine situation to want to avoid. The facebook smear campaigns I've seen against teachers are incredible. Also, they absolutely have been sued, and if I remember I'll link a handful later when home. Or the even more fun phenomenon is other parents calling CPS on parents when they witness their children walking home unattended, and that report is actually pursued and adjudicated.

aklemm 2y ago

Well that headline sums it up. After 10 years of dealing with it and wondering "how the f did we get to this point", it's satisfying to hear it called what it is. A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sleep and all the rest. Pay for the buses! Build the greenways! Normalize walking! And stop worrying about abductions for the love of gawd!

mmmlinux 2y ago
"he decided" is probably one of the issues here. back in the day it would have been "this is what your doing now kid"
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Every generation grows and becomes better than the last*.
  - colecut 2y ago
    /me says "ok boomer" in gen-z
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      * Certain exclusions may apply
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  You're right. We would have been mocked "It's a mile and a half, I'm not picking you up when you have two perfectly good legs."
- xmprt 2y ago
  There's a difference when everyone is walking home (so you often walk home with a few friends who live nearby) vs being alone walking home.

tslocum 2y ago

Does this article really need a visual aid of cars waiting in a line, let alone a sloppy AI generated visual aid?

blitzar 2y ago
The concept in the article is foreign to nearly the entire planet.

Mistletoe 2y ago

It’s awful. Big long line where I live and it used to be handled by one school bus and kids walking home. Imagine the waste of human productive time, fuel, etc. I’m always astounded this many people don’t have a job to be at at 3pm.

bombcar 2y ago
Mayhap part of it is the "modern smoke break" - the people picking up like to have an excuse to take a break from work in the early afternoon.

hk1337 2y ago

I used to walk or take the bus, even in elementary school. I am not sure at what point parents decided they must take their kids to school. We did have parents dropping kids off and it was busy but not like it is now. I know then, at least to me, there was a sort of an air about about seeing kids being picked up or dropped off because they didn't have to ride the bus. Maybe that's it, parents gave in to not wanting their kids to feel less about themselves because they had to ride the bus?

zip1234 2y ago

Great article. It wouldn't be that difficult for schools and cities to encourage walking or biking. There are lots of easy things that could be done. My daughter's school doesn't properly clear the sidewalks during winter. The giant parking lot is always immaculate though. They actually renovated and rerouted traffic to make it less safe for pedestrians. My daughter's friend was hit in a crosswalk (with a crossing guard!) by a parent leaving school after dropping her kid off. No penalty to the driver.

ryandrake 2y ago

An odd choice of dates in the charts: 1969, 2009, 2017, 2022. 40 years between the first two and less than ten between the other ones. I would have liked to see more uniform spacing between the first two to understand whether the change across those 40 years was gradual. Our family suffers this insanity, too. This is one of the few things my spouse absolutely refuses to budge on: she won't let our child walk, bicycle, or even take the school bus to school because of vague "danger" that the news media is pumping into her. School is only 3 miles away and we live in a peaceful rural-to-suburban area. The kid could walk that distance at midnight and not be even remotely at risk. No facts, statistics or reasoning works.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
It's not always easy to find the data you want. When you're writing a blog post like this, you do research and find the studies that you can, published when they were.
graypegg 2y ago
I totally understand the anxiety. If you get "DANGER!" pumped into you constantly, it's going to be hard to rationalize your way out of that. Have you two ever tried walking along the road at around the same time? A calm walk along the same path your kids would be taking would put me at ease about the situation if I was in the same spot.
Suppafly 2y ago
I know those gaps are often due to the data coming from different sources and it's not always possible to normalize it and what not, but I'm always super suspicious when they do that. Also when you see results that are like 1953-1986, like maybe the results from 1952 and 1987 invalidate whatever point they want to make, so they used only the section that helps their case.
jisnsm 2y ago
[flagged]

yieldcrv 2y ago

At many schools, the school bus was an embarrassment too, or at least some routes as neighborhood demographics changed The most rambunctious, violent, harrowing and underpoliced part of the day Not offering a solution, just an observation

user3939382 2y ago

I frequently contemplate the cumulative pollution of all these cars idling in every town across the country 5 days a week twice a day.

legitster 2y ago

Unfortunately we are one of those families. The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.

supertrope 2y ago
The post-Covid labor market shift has raised the price of school bus drivers beyond what schools are willing to pay for.
hk1337 2y ago
> It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back. I don't know how your bus driver would handle it but even back in the 80s, some parents would drive their kids to the bus stop and let them wait in the car until the bus came. As they got older, like 5th or 6th grade, they would be taught to dress warm for the wait.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back 1st grade is probably too young to wait alone. But by 3rd grade I'd expect a child to be able to bundle themselves up.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  Putting the bus stop on a major road without adequate place to stand is a problem. But a 5 year old is totally capable of waiting for a bus, given the appropriate location to do so. Even more so in a typical suburb, where there's likely several of them waiting at the same place (when I was a kid, we walked half a block to the corner and waiting in a group of ~5-~15 kids).
commandlinefan 2y ago
Our school system wouldn't send buses if you were within two miles of the school. We were (seriously) 1.99 miles away, so we had to drive our kids back and forth.

bluGill 2y ago

The pickup point should be 1km from the school unless you have a doctors note. Kids need to walk that much or more anyway for health.

mcbishop 2y ago

We park on the other side of a city park from my daughter's school. ...The five minute walk thru the park together is a highlight of my day.

nancyminusone 2y ago

Sorry, but this one's on the parents. My mom would never put up with driving us in every day. It was either take the bus or walk, you lazy kid.

lvl155 2y ago

Counter point: I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived. I can go on and on and on. I had to learn to walk an extra 20-30 minutes to avoid these situations. I will never let my kids walk home in 2025. Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a drive-through. In most cases, it is a choice. You can opt to park like a normal person and walk up. This article is absurd. Most of these parents are too lazy to walk 5 minutes. I’ve seen parents show up 40 minutes to be first in queue…just so they don’t have to get out of their cars. Makes zero sense.

vidarh 2y ago
If I lived in the kind of third world hellhole where this was a realistic scenario, I'd leave the country.
- bombcar 2y ago
  You don't even need to leave the country, as these locations are very specific parts of cities in the country.
- lvl155 2y ago
  It’s the US. People on here are so sheltered.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    The vast majority of the US is not like this. Yes, there are some (generally poor, urban) areas with crime problems. The average middle class town or suburb? Walking to school would be safe, if we simply built sidewalks instead of 6 lane highways.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    The majority of the US is absolutely not like this. You keep accusing other people of living in a bubble, but you're indexing your entire experience on to anecdotes of where you grew up as an individual experience.

mooreds 2y ago

This is why I was adamant that my kids took the school bus when it is an option. Even though my family has the flexible schedule to handle dropping kids via car, by using the bus system I help support the community and others who might not have that flexibility. Plus, the school bus is one of the first places a kid might be without (much) adult supervision. A tremendous growth opportunity, where you learn how to deal with discomfort, difference and drama.

willmeyers 2y ago

I live in a relatively residential neighborhood in NYC next to a school (outside of the congestion zone). The morning dropoffs and afternoon pickups are insane. It literally causes a gridlock for a couple hours in a part of the neighborhood that has like 4 intersections. Somehow we have to get back to the days when parents trusted the community that their kid is going to get home safe, otherwise this nonsense is never going to end.

otoburb 2y ago
Except that many NYC public schools have yellow buses that park in the narrow streets during pickup or dropoff which are the cause for 20 minutes of gridlock along those streets. "A couple of hours" seems to be rather unusual.

furyofantares 2y ago

The article makes a lot of great points, but looks to miss that kids are enrolled in a lot of after school activities these days. I was never enrolled in any as a kid and never really expected for my kid to be, because I thought parents were the motivating factor for kids to get into a bunch of activities, but IME they aren't. My kid loves her activities and picking her up to shuttle her directly to it is a lot quicker than using a bus or walking.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
The article mentions Japan as a comparison, where kids are also enrolled in a lot of after-school activities. They tend to get there on their own.

rattlesnakedave 2y ago

Surely behavior of children on a busses plays _some_ role in this decision. Not sure how they would even gather stats on this but busses in my youth were total zoos. Further, schools near me won't allow many children to walk home even within a safe walking distance with parental consent for (and I quote) "liability reasons". Absurd.

bombcar 2y ago
You have to enact protection for the schools from that, or their insurance goes insane (or refuses to be available for any money). Where I am the school line is mainly to prevent kids from running between the cars; anyone who has been authorized can just be let free and walk home - some of whom just walk a block to where their parent is waiting.

kkylin 2y ago

My kids' school used to let parents into the yard during dropoff and pickup. It was wonderful: a time for the kids to play with their friends and the parents to mingle and catch up. Now we have the car dropoff/pickup line. I'm for "everyone park and walk your kid into school" or "let kids go home by themselves if it's safe to do so" [0]. The car pickup and dropoff is the absolute worst. [0] Our current bike route from home to school isn't optimal -- too many busy streets where drivers routinely run reds. That's a rant for another day...

skybrian 2y ago

The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far? I went to school in a semi-rural school district, one of the largest in the state by area. I just checked Google Maps and the high school is 13 miles away, 16 minutes by car (much of it highway), and maybe a half hour by school bus if I remember correctly. It could be a bit tedious, but it wasn't a terrible commute by any means. > Parents are not simply choosing to drive their children to school because it’s fun to sit in a long line. It is becoming more of a necessity because schools are more spread out than before, or at least families are living further from their schools. Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas. They work for all ages, in any weather where the school is open at all.

Aurornis 2y ago
> The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far? The buckets were chosen because 3 miles is farther than you'd reasonably expect kids to be able to walk to and from school every day. They say this right under the chart. It's not helpful to do chest-thumping to compare whose farthest away from school when the entire point of the section is that 80% of people fall into that bucket. > Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas. Again, you've missed the point of the article. In cities, students are spread out in all directions. It's not feasible for a bus to loop around an entire city to pick everyone up when they're spread all over.
- skybrian 2y ago
  You’re right, I don’t get it. Why is it expected that kids should be able to walk to school? Seems like that’s a pretty blinkered view by someone who never leaves the city? In a rural district, very few kids can do that, and that’s why there are buses for everyone else. Also, why wouldn’t school buses work in a denser area? That’s why they have multiple school buses doing multiple routes. All the usual arguments for mass transit should apply for school buses, too. Density should make providing bus service easier, not harder.

trevin 2y ago

Thinking through where I've lived -- a lot of the original school buildings built in circa 1950 were more in city center. The article touches on the move of schools to the outskirts of town as a cost savings measure but I think the opposite may be true. As population and (perceived) facilities increased, the schools built new buildings in farmland or other wide open areas on the outskirts of town to have more room for stuff like stadiums, huge auditoriums, bigger playgrounds. The land may be cheaper but the new high schools are almost more like college campuses vs. stately buildings in the middle of town. There's an appetite for more and we've relocated schools to make more room not save money.

bluGill 2y ago
Schools relocated as parents moved to the suburbs. The schools saw this coming and built schools near those new houses. Schools sometimes see things coming and buy farmland 10-20 years in advance so that when the suburb expands they have the land to build on, but the schools are not built until it is obvious that the parents are coming.

me_smith 2y ago

My mom walked me to school until I was in 4th grade. She was a single mom and needed to work, so she decided to let me walk to and from school from then on. I made friends on that walk. 30+ years later, I am still friends with many of them even though we live hours away from each other. I'm not a parent, so I don't know what I don't know; but, I've observed so many kids being shuffled between school, events, "play dates" where it is harder to build deep relationships outside of the parent's sight. Everything is being curated to "ensure" the kids are safe or on the "right" path. I understand that we live in a different world, but I really do feel that its to the detriment of the kids.

Aurornis 2y ago
There's an entire section and even a chart in the article that explains why this is different now In 1969 only about 30% of kids lived too far away from school for walking to be a realistic option. In 2009 (and today) that numbers is around 80%. Walking to and from school is great if you can do it. Most people cannot do it.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  Seriously - I'd love to have my kids walk but we are 22 miles away (in a rural area).
  - me_smith 2y ago
    I grew up in a suburban area so I am out of touch with the rural experience. Because the article is comparing the past with the present, I am curious what parents were doing in the 90s in your area? And, what are parents doing nowadays? I'm assuming, either car or bus. And I can't imagine that would have changed since the 90s unless there used to be a school much closer.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    When I grew up in a rural area I walked 1/3 mile to meet the school bus. Is that not still the typical experience?

cyberax 2y ago

[flagged]

richwater 2y ago

Helicopter parents exist because public trust is completely eroded. I don't want to blame it on diversity but the example provided in the article is a homogenous-culture society with high trust.

anonfordays 2y ago
Gigantic tank-like vehicles with worse line of sight then actual tanks, insane levels of crime that are rampant all over the US compared to Japan, etc. Make tank-like trucks and SUVs illegal to manufacturer is a good start. It's going to be tough to compete with homogenous first-world countries on culture and crime.

newuser94303 2y ago

What about the people that report parents to the police for endangering their children by allowing them to walk/bike to school?

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
From the article: > It’s not just a message to parents, it’s the broader society.[...] A mom was recently arrested for letting her 10-year-old son walk into town. These types of incidents only fuel the school car pickup culture
RandomBacon 2y ago
If the child is not in any actual danger, then people who call emergency services or police need to be cited for wasting resources. Busybodies seem to call because of "what if" things. That child's actual danger is the busybody.
- appleorchard46 2y ago
  Apparently a child being alone constitutes being in danger. From the article [0] [0] https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year-old-walk-alone-to-town/ https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year...
- bluGill 2y ago
  > If the child is not in any actual danger, then people who call emergency services or police need to be cited for wasting resources. As a mandatory reporter, my instructions are if there is any possibility report and let the experts figure it out. There is no harm to me if I report and nothing is found. However if they discover something and find that I was in contact with the kid in question they will investigate: if there is anything that I should have seen I'll be arrested for not reporting it.
  - RandomBacon 2y ago
    I appreciate that mandatory reporting laws exist for evidence of abuse, and to an extent, suspicion of abuse; but does your training say that children left alone less than a few hours, is abuse or is suspicious by itself, and needs to be reported? There is always the possibility for anything, so that cannot be the bar.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nextdoorsv 2y ago

Californians should read this too: (TLDR: It's Prop 13's fault) https://www.kqed.org/news/11980715/why-dont-more-bay-area-kids-ride-school-buses https://www.kqed.org/news/11980715/why-dont-more-bay-area-ki... >California has fewer school buses than in other parts of the country. A survey conducted by the Federal Highway Administration found that nationally, almost 40% of school-aged kids ride a school bus. In California, that number is only 8%. >Like so many questions related to school funding and services, the answer to Winters’ question has roots in the passage of Proposition 13

nextdoorsv 2y ago
I think people would be surprised that there's school districts where the median home value is $1.5M, but the district can't afford any school bus service except for federally mandated school buses for special ed kids. For those familiar with the Bay Area - Fremont: https://fremontunified.org/about/business-services/transportation/elimination-of-home-to-school-transportation-services/ https://fremontunified.org/about/business-services/transport...
nullc 2y ago
Many-- most?-- states have property tax rates capped for your primary residence. Otherwise property values going up can push you out of your home. Prop 13 goes further-- but many of the communities with the low tax income are precisely the ones full of single family homes rather than expansive commercial/industrial areas. California ranks 19th in the country in per student spending -- so it's not wildly out of place compared to the rest of the country. Moreover, Florida bus rates are at 30% and it ranks near the very bottom in per-student spend. I think you should look elsewhere for the low bus rates than funding.

blobbers 2y ago

This is the kind of article that needs to get into national culture. We gotta change the way we live. I don't know how to get it to happen, but we need more people doing this.

bongodongobob 2y ago
People need to stop being fucking pussies and actually engage with dumb arguments. It seems people these days are so conflict averse that no one ever speaks up. "We all have our opinions!" Yeah, and sometimes they are stupid.
- blobbers 2y ago
  Yeah, but even things like biking to school. Nothing to do with conflict. Currently we're a 39 minute walk from school; a little long for a kid at age 8. We're like a 10 minute drive, in traffic with lights etc, and I think basically a 10 minute bike ride. There isn't a good biking system because the roads are set up like a grid, and there's no walking path through it. I think for biking culture to thrive you need bike only or bike/ped paths, otherwise you end up having to bike on busy streets or stop at many intersections. I'm going to try to organize something like a mini bike bus in my neigborhood.

ZekeSulastin 2y ago

I didn’t understand at the time how much of a privilege it was that I could walk to school where I grew up (with crossing guards for the elementary schoolers, even!) and more importantly that my parents encouraged it, even if it was a bit of a hike to middle and high school without a bike. Unfortunately we moved during high school and lived something like 15 miles from the new school; at least there was a bus.

WillAdams 2y ago

Like many societal issues, support for bike transport would be one way to address this. To help support that, it should be expected that on the first day of school, police officers will ride bikes along all the routes students are expected to cover --- to help support that, bring back truant officers and put them on bicycles.

hnthrowaway0315 2y ago

Not much to do for most of the parents, TBH, especially if you want to get into a good school. Me? I picked the public elementary school 10 minutes of walk away instead of the private one that is 20+ minutes of driving. I don't want everyone in the household gets frustrated pretty much every Mon-Fri. Secondary school is going to be a bit of issue. We do have one that is adjacent to the said elementary school but it is not very good. But then my son would be 11 years old by then so hopefully he can just take the bus.

mclau156 2y ago

Putting so much emphasis on cars, and being in cars is a national embarrassment

AStonesThrow 2y ago

The weirdest part of my school day was wandering out of the recess lot and trying to find Mom’s car every day. A lot of my classmates were bused in from 15 miles away and we were second-class “townies” but yet, we lived outside the parochial territory. Fifth Estate, I suppose. Once Dad bought a new car and surprised us by not picking us up in the one we recognized?! Around 5th grade I had some sort of trauma-drama on the soccer field, needed to call in Mom for a pickup. I didn’t know what a busy-tone sounded like despite figuring out the payphone on campus. I held the receiver to my ear for 10 minutes anxiously hoping Mom would answer. I believe the rare school bus rides were field trips, and once my friend and I were in the rear, frantically waving and smiling at every other motorist to see how they’d respond, and we failed to cause any accidents I feel it was a curse on Mom to put so many miles on Soccer Mom Car. Parents couldn’t hardly wait for our maturity and licensing!

wavemode 2y ago

> Likewise, a mom was recently arrested for letting her 10-year-old son walk into town. That linked article is incredible to me (considering how much I used to walk around at that age). If our culture becomes so backwards that you will actually be criminalized for letting your kids move around independently, then of course we'll be doomed to car pickup lines forever.

twiddling 2y ago
Had to dig around for this but it is quite illuminating: https://www.freerangekids.com/how-children-lost-the-right-to-roam-in-just-4-generations/ https://www.freerangekids.com/how-children-lost-the-right-to...
- rsanek 2y ago
  looks like that is a bit of blogspam, ultimate source is https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children...

appleorchard46 2y ago

I just want to highlight this link in the article, about a mother who was arrested because her son walked less than a mile into town (population 370) on his own [0]. Arrested. For putting him in danger. What a mess. [0] https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year-old-walk-alone-to-town/ https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year...

samgranieri 2y ago

I was driven to school during preschool, kindergarten, and part of grade school, biked or walked in junior high or high school. My kid is in preschool and I drive him or walk him to school. He'll be able to walk to junior high and high school, and will probably take the bus to grade school. I don't mind the pickup line right now.

alistairSH 2y ago

100% agree with the title. I live ~1 mile from the local school complex (primary, middle, high all share a gigantic piece of land, though are separate full-size schools). You literally don't have to cross a street to get there from my house - it's all neighborhood walking paths and there's a short underpass at the one road. Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. There's a bus, which isn't the end of the world. Except in the time it takes to wait for the bus, you could walk most of the way to school. And 1/4 of the parents drive their kids anyway. It's completely absurd. Of course, I walk the ~1 mile to my office in the other direction and most of my coworkers think I'm a loon. So, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Americans are just hard-wired to drive even the shortest distances. We've done such a piss-poor job with urban planning and transit design that 3+ generations of Americans think anything but a car is unthinkable (literally, I don't think it crosses their minds).

Aurornis 2y ago
> Yet, kids are not supposed to walk. According to who? Reading these comments reminds me that America is a big place and experiences are very different from one location to the next. My closest school has hundreds of kids walking to and from through all the neighborhoods if you drive by during morning or afternoon hours. My last in-office job had numerous people with 20-40 minute walks as part of their commute (except in rain/winter). We had people who routinely biked 10+ miles to the office. It's not "Americans are lazy". It's the people you're around.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  According to the school. They don't like releasing kids on their own for some reason. neighbors wanted their son to walk home alone and the school said the kid could either take the bus, or a parent could show up and walk him out. Yes, for the same ~1 mile walk I describe above, that's all paved paths in a very safe neighborhood outside DC (Reston VA). Not all of Reston is like this, but out are is VERY walkable (~1 mile to schools, ~1 mile to shopping, ~1.5-2 miles to the town center and Metro station).
gizajob 2y ago

biophysboy 2y ago

Our infrastructure in general is a national embarrassment. I'm more pessimistic on this category than anything else. The best possible future I can imagine in the USA, transportation-wise, is not having to hold the steering wheel during a robo traffic jam.

drewg123 2y ago

This problem is over for me, as my son has graduated, but part of the problem is NIMBY'ified suburban roads that dead-end rather than connecting neighborhoods (in order to cut down on neighborhood traffic). My son's school was about 250 meters from his mom's house. Due to the NIMBY way the neighborhoods were built, he would have had to ride his bike or walk 2.5 miles on busy roads w/o bike lanes to get to his mom's house. The direct route was 2 dead end roads that should have connected the neighborhoods together. But instead, there was ~30m of dense forest marked with "no trespassing" signs. This meant that me and his mom had to wait in the school line rather than him being able to walk/bike to and from school. Even when I had custody, I would have much rather picked him up from his mom's house than school because the line was miserable. I was so happy when he got his license and was able to drive himself.

hommelix 2y ago
In the Netherlands they build the neighborhood like that, but at the dead end of the street is a small path for walking/biking. So driving to school would take 2 km, but walking only 500 m.
- drewg123 2y ago
  Yes, this would have been so much smarter. But in this case, they apparently sold extra large lots to the surrounding houses, and made no provisions for pedestrians. Welcome to the USA.

aantix 2y ago

Raising children is no longer a communal effort. If you let your kid out roaming, walking home from school, and the child causes a minor issue, you get the wrath of "Why aren't you watching your kid?"??? So we've developed this culture around ensuring that the child is accounted for at all hours of the day. Drop off, pickup from school, included.

linuxftw 2y ago

Fortunately, there's homeschool. In the amount of time it takes someone to load up the kids into the car, drive to school, wait in these long lines, and then do the reverse, that should be enough instructor-led time for an entire homeschooling curriculum. The best part is, you won't have to subject your children to marxists and people that look like literal clowns that fell face-first into a tackle box.

rdsubhas 2y ago

Sometimes I truly wonder how the US is so far ahead in innovation and efficiency. This is unthinkable, how many hours of driving to and fro + this queue each day. Here I am, in Germany, my kid goes to school by himself since second grade. Most of his classmates started to walk, bike, or take the train, bus or tram themselves at 3rd or 4th grade. Beyond 6th grade, it's considered a spoiled baby.

nick_ 2y ago
A huge amount of North America is designed almost exclusively for a totally car-dependent life.

thehoagie 2y ago

We live across the street from our kids elementary and middle schools. There is a sidewalk and a crosswalk to the school. Parents in our subdivision still choose to drive in because "the crosswalk is too dangerous". Schools can't afford crossing guards, county engineers claim it is an enforcement issue, police can't cover it with their limited staffing, and Republicans are banning school speeding cameras in Georgia.

rexpop 2y ago
New York City saw a 55% reduction in fatalities in school zones with cameras, and Oglethorpe County, Georgia reported zero accidents in a high-risk zone for three months after camera installation, compared to 1–2 daily crashes previously. Using a monthly prevention rate of 0.9–1.4 deaths[0], a ban could result in 10–17 additional fatalities annually per monitored corridor. So, after how many bonus deaths will Republicans be held liable? 0. https://ssti.us/2024/03/11/speed-cameras-lower-speeds-and-prevent-crashes-new-research-confirms/ https://ssti.us/2024/03/11/speed-cameras-lower-speeds-and-pr...
Suppafly 2y ago
>Schools can't afford crossing guards Parents could get together and volunteer to do crossing duty or hire a private crossing guard, it probably wouldn't even cost very much.
bluGill 2y ago
> county engineers claim it is an enforcement issue, They are probably professional engineers who can lose their license if anyone discovered that there have long been known road designs that prevent this. It will take some research, but the law is on your side to have them dismissed for cause if enforcement is all they are relying on.
- closeparen 2y ago
  It would violate professional standards for a traffic engineer to implement a more pedestrian-safety oriented design at an intersection before the requisite number of children have been killed to justify it.

cainxinth 2y ago

> The classic yellow school bus is a national icon. It is, but like the pickup line, it’s also a national embarrassment. Half the buses in my town are ancient and belch black smoke like a semi rolling coal.

lxe 2y ago

I think parental paranoia plays a very small role in this. If at least one thing were to change: reasonable schoolbus routes, walkability, traffic safety, public transport, then we'd see a huge uptick.

twiddling 2y ago

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children... How children lost the right to roam in four generations

ghugccrghbvr 2y ago

Moved to Germany. Put kids 4 6 in school. School sends letter home: parents, please stop driving kids to school. Walking is part of the experience. It’s the same all over Europe. The distance to school is a social choice. But in the US, kids can’t even get off a school bus without a parent waiting Fear culture and security theater

haswell 2y ago

This is a good piece that is undermined somewhat by the AI imagery. My goal isn't to just complain about AI, but I've been reflecting on how my own mental process unfolded while reading this. > Note: I used AI to create this image rather than pull one from another site without permission. I don't have kids, and while I've seen pickup lines from time to time, I have very little first-hand experience with them. So my brain reacts to the image: - Is this image a realistic representation? - If it is, I have no first-hand knowledge to verify it - If it's not, I have no way to know without going and looking for images myself - If it is, it's undermining the content by representing something real with something fake Artwork/illustrations/visualizations are often critical when communicating via text. But I think that when someone is writing about a factual matter - a real phenomenon that is occurring regularly - using fake imagery is just the wrong choice.

gist 2y ago

At the core this behavior is simply a version of social proof. Parents see what other parents do and/or kids see friends being picked up and then put pressure on their parents to do the same. Then it gets to a tipping point where it just becomes the thing that you do (and nobody thinks otherwise or wants to tell their kids they won't do this or questions it). It's also a way for a parent to think somehow they are doing the right thing and get a little enjoyment in their head (despite the time involved or wasted) 'I am a good parent'. Doesn't involve as much effort as other things a parent does (or should do) it's simple (other than the time).

CLiED 2y ago

I guess this is what they call American Exceptionalism?

cavisne 2y ago

As the author mentioned the rise of ebikes is counteracting this, however the ones popular with teens (Surrons and other similar chinese brands) require you to cut one wire to remove the speed limiter and then they can do 50MPH. The idea of common spaces in American cities largely died during & after Covid. Anything you did in public (gyms, eating out, public transport, apartment common areas) was suddenly prey to whatever idea a politician had that morning. I think we all remember walking into a restaurant with a mask on, to promptly take it off as soon as you sat down. At the same time as these guidelines were being piled on, basically all laws below murder stopped being enforced. So you had to negotiate a bus full of drug addicts shooting up and riding for free, or leave the sidewalk because it had been taken over by a tent city. Personal transport is required in America, the places with the infrastructure to avoid it dont have the capacity to govern (any big city). The places with the governing capacity (suburban, rural areas) dont have the infrastructure.

bartimus 2y ago

I came in expecting this was going to be a methodological article. Maybe better let the kids wait as opposed to the parents in their cars?

apwell23 2y ago

i live in chicago and just stared taking my son to preschool on the local El train. Would love to do that when he goes to school.

daft_pink 2y ago

The real tragedy is that people don’t let their kids walk or bike to school anymore unsupervised.

xnx 2y ago

Are any kids commuting to school by electric bike/scooter? Maybe secure storage during the school day is an issue?

jinushaun 2y ago

Car line is a choice. I park a block away and walk to the school to do the pick up. Waiting in line to avoid walking is stupid and lazy.

rurban 2y ago

> the leading cause of death for American youngsters is from car-related incidents. I've read some timed ago that drowning in swimmingpools was the leading cause of deaths for kids. So maybe the mandatory protections (fences) there did help. So more schoolbuses could help with their pickup line crisis. In Germany in our schools such pickup lines are explicitly forbidden. Kids must go by themselves (bus or bike). Helicopter parenting is frawned upon, and recent right-wing rumors in Berlin amongst silly parents about organized Rumanian abduction trucks are actively fought. Dangerous fakenews on social media, probably Russian.

xela79 2y ago

I wonder if taking your kids in your country to school by car instead of going on foot might have anything to do with child kidnapping & killings? where the police was too lame to actual find the kids and more died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_March