When it's about cars, the "think of the children" machine suddenly breaks.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Come on. Electing pedophile presidents ring a bell?
Or guns in the ’Murica.
These fucking people always uses "think of the children", religion, and the Constitution for their own perspective but suddenly dismiss it when it comes to feeding children, children safety and freedom of speech of speech they don't like.
They are hypocrites and they don't care that they are.
Disarming the rich and powerful won't ever happen. Disarming queer then black then poor folk will.
No, it just switches to “ten points each” mode.
And ironically it's one of the few cases where it's a legitimate argument since the kids are actually being killed instead of merely exercising their autonomy in a way someone doesn't like.
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Parent Drivers: Sacrificed their free time, because now they have to fucking drive their kids everywhere. Once kids above a certain age could roam wild (pros and cons there, but on the whole a good thing IMO) and just come back for dinner.
My kid’s school pays parents $50 a month to drive them to school because there’s not enough bus drivers
$50 / 4.33 weeks / 5 days = $2.31 per day.
The official mileage rate for Ontario (my province) is $0.655/km.
This only makes sense if the drive is < 3.5km per day total.
Assuming this is trip chained (no extra mileage because of the detou, like a drop and back) that's 1.75km per drop/pickup.
Minimum distance for bussing of gr 3+ in my area is 2.4km.
This scheme does not pay parents to drive children to school, it only reduces the burden.
Yes, it’s very stupid. I agree.
To be fair, kids are not allowed to do most of those things because people are scared of pedos, not cars. 40 years ago we already had cars but I was allowed to disappear for whole days without anyone complaining. Now kids can't go to the playground alone even if they don't have to cross any roads.
That too is caused by car-centric design, though. It's not as though there were no pedos before there were cars, of course, but when a city isn't primarily designed around cars, there tend to be a lot more people outside, making it much harder to drag a child into an unmarked van.
This has nothing to do with design or actual crimes. People are scared because the media is scarring them. The numbers of abductions are actually dropping but people are more and more scared because child predators were made into the bogeyman of the XXI century. It's a well known fact that crime perception in US does not align with actual crime statistics. Cars have nothing to do with it.
Sure, but the media can only scare people if they can imagine it being true. It's a lot easier to imagine someone who would do their children harm actually going through with it and succeeding when the kids are wondering around suburban cul-de-sac hell where the only other people are zooming past in a car.
EDIT: I'd like to add that the urban design also changes how people deal with this fear. For example, in Japan it's common for elementary schoolers to have a buzzer on them with a cord to pull in case of stranger danger. So clearly this fear exists there too, but you still see kids going around town without adult supervision. The reason why the buzzer can give peace of mind is because they can pretty much count on there always being people close by enough to hear the buzzer go off.
Jane Jacobs wrote about this in like the 1960s. More regular people on the street makes people feel safer. It probably actually makes people safer, too.
So, yes, car-first culture makes crime and fear worse. A local neighborhood with people walking about doing their business is safer than one where people just drive, park, and leave.
IMHO saying that "car culture -> less people walking -> more crime -> more fear -> less kids on the streets" is a bit of a stretch. I'm sure it can be true in some areas but is far from universal rule. European cities are very walkable yet no one lets small kids play outside alone. Many villages are way less walkable yet kids play outside alone without issues. This meme tries to imply that kids don't play outside because of cars yet it's only one of contributing factors and only in some places.
You can take it up with Jane Jacobs, I guess.
I don't think anyone's saying car dominance is the only factor, but it's a big one.
IMHO saying that “car culture -> less people walking -> more crime -> more fear -> less kids on the streets” is a bit of a stretch.
That's not the claim. The claim is “car culture -> less people walking -> ~~more crime~~ -> more fear -> less kids on the streets.” The perception matters; the reality doesn't.
More people from more walks of life (pun intended) on the street probably does reduce some types of crime, though. You're not going to be mugged on the street outside two busy restaurants and a record shop with a bunch of other people walking around.
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Not in my country. All the things on the left are still true, but predators isn’t really something parents are (or need to be) worried about. Also, there are a lot more cars now than 40 years ago.
In my country it's true the fear of both cars and pedos and arguably, cars made it worse because now there is less people around that can prevent any pedo from acting- there aren't many pedos but the fear is there.
Our cities were not designed around cars like in the USA.
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to back this up, the Netherlands keep scoring highest in UNICEF's child well being reports: https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/child-well-being-unpredictable-world
On the right column: "high speed limits near schools", that's their brave sacrifice
"sometimes slow down near schools"
* if they feel like it.
To the right column, I would add, "Occasionally getting stuck behind a school bus, and not being allowed to pass as the stop every block". It's not much, but I think having 1 thing in the right column is a little bit funnier.
This implies drivers stop for buses
https://www.trafficsafetymarketing.gov/safety-topics/school-bus-safety
Fair point. I don't even need to click the link, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law both drive busses. I thought drivers blowing past would MAYBE happen every few years but apparently it happens to them at least every week.
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"Not driving ar maximum speed"
"I sacrificed my manliness to get a minivan to drive my kids around in. Whatchu talkin' 'bout?"
I can't let my child ride their bike on our street because of the assholes that speed down our road. I saw a biker almost get hit the other day by some idiot driver.
Would be awesome if instead of govs pushing age verification and similar bullshit they would shift the focus to cars
That won't be profitable, or increase the amount of surveillance.
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Given the sheer size many trucks and SUVs have ballooned up into now, pedestrians should be armed with bricks crossing the street now.
I know I’m going to be publicly beheaded for saying this, but I somehow doubt the kids aren’t playing in the street any more for a different reason.
Kids play on dead end streets in my neighbourhood, but not on streets with multiple access points.
I wonder why that correlation exists.
My quibble is that the streets wouldn't exist without vehicle traffic (including horses). I'm sure it was safer to play in a street meant for horse traffic though.
Streets go back to the earliest large human settlements, long before vehicles.
White text on a black background... serious ink.
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