to think it's *not* more dangerous on the streets for kids than when we were kids?

[Echobelly]

I do hear parents saying they don't let kids who are old enough, IMO, to be out and about a bit (say 10-11) saying 'But it's not like it was in our days' or 'There are so many nutters out there'

I'm in early 40s and was walking about 10-15mins to local shops and back and forth to best mates house 10 mins away by age 7 (suburban London). I didn't let out my kids that young mainly as they didn't have friends living that close and there are so few kids of that age around independently I was worried someone would report me! I did start sending DD to corner shop (less than 30seconds away) from age about 7 and a half and I think she only reported to me once someone expressing concern about her (and not calling the police, thankfully!)

I think cars, the biggest danger, were just as big a danger 'in my day' and in fact people generally drive more slowly and safely in towns than they used to (other than those looking at phones )

I think 'nutters' have always been an infintessimally small risk and there's no evidence there are 'more nutters these days' - just more news channels!

DD started walking to and from school about a mile away from final term at primary as I knew she would need to make her own way to and from secondary school and most people do seem to accept kids walking then, but I don't get why so many don't seem to allow them to do anything unsupervised until right at that moment.

Apologies, that’s one MONTH

And, sorry, just one ward, not the entire borough. We have four or five wards I think.

I agree social disintegration hasn't helped - people seem willing to judge parents, but scared to help kids. And kids are taught to be scared of accepting help by a blanket 'stranger danger' message, rather than a more sensible message of you can accept help from a stranger, but don't go anywhere with an adult, even one you know, without your parents' permission, unless they're police!

Far more dangerous now, you can't play kirby or other related street games.
We used to all walk to school and back together, we made our own walking bus. It's not safe for kids to walk now as they'd be on their own because parents take their snowflakes in cars.

There are certainly more speed bumps as they only came out in the early 90s although the cars nowadays are much quite so not easy for some children to hear. I try to encourage my son to go out but there is not much he can do. They have closed youth clubs x3 and the leasure centre is closed after school except on a Wednesday so all there is a park or the marsh and it's full of heroine addicts as that's the places they go. When I was younger in the 80s I us to go to youth clubs after school clubs ect ect they don't do that anymore. So in my area it is worse now for our children.

@FunkyKingston they don’t all die?
Oh well that’s alright then

Yes the point I am making to funkykingston is that only quoting fatal stabbings is inaccurate, downplays the danger and makes it sound like everyone is panicking. 9 fatal stabbings sounds better than the reality of 346 violent crimes in one ward of one London Borough per month.

Like others have said, cars barely register.

I don't think it is more dangerous overall. Probably some areas are more dangerous, others less. The type of dangers have changed a bit. But I grew up in a very peaceful, rural area, and had the traditional 'strange man in a van' try to entice me into his van in the mid-80s. Genette Tate disappeared about 20 miles away a few years earlier.

It is all very place specific - what are the dangers, and what can parents do to protect their children is so variable I don't think you can generalise. For example, if a new, and fast, road has been built, but so have pedestrian bridges, it could be safer for children. The road is more dangerous, but because of that they have been given a safer way of crossing the road than initially existed.

There are plenty of places where knife crime has not increased and rival postcodes do not exist. It is a mistake to use the most extreme (and rare) situations as examples of what is typical.

I think there were just as many peado phones and mass murderers as when you were a kid but knife crime where I live has fucking skyrocketed. So actually I think it is more dangerous

@FunkyKingston they don’t all die?
Oh well that’s alright then

I didn't say that. I was responding to a specific point about 'countless' young people dying.

I completely agree OP. I moved back to where I grew up to raise my DS and he has just as much freedom as I had in the 70's. He's been playing out and walking to school with friends since age 7. I actually think it seems safer than when I was a teenager in the 80's. Back then the streets were full of football 'casuals', rival school gangs and drugs/knives. It seems quite tame out there compared to my youth tbh, maybe because a lot of boys are indooors gaming or because there's so much more for kids to do nowadays.

I think it depends very much on who you are and where you are.

I think for an average white middle class child its not significantly more dangerous now than it was 30-40 years ago. Marginally more traffic maybe.

But the knife crime thing is very specific. If you're young and live in certain postcodes its exponentially more dangerous. But the majority of children are not directly affected by knife crime. It ticks me off a bit when people living in wealthy suburbs throw their hands up in horror about knife crime because the brunt of that burden will not be felt by their kids at all but the kids in the poorer areas.

But every generation of parents always back to some false Elysian childhood when people played out in the street etc. It's largely nostalgia and its largely not true.

It’s been more than a slight increase in vehicles on the road. Not had a chance to look up stats for accidents.

There has been 100 violent deaths of teenagers in 2019 In London

That’s a huge issue and it’s ridiculous to try and say it isnt

No it's not, the only thing that's more risky is the increase in traffic.

County lines is very scary for anyone involved with vulnerable children but they were always exploited too (see Oliver Twist!)

I agree, with the exception of traffic/cars.
I wish more kids played outside. My nephews rarely do other than organised sports.
There’s a misconception about how much crime actually takes place, thanks to the media / social media in the main.
Is definitely be most worried about a road traffic accident than anything else.

Agree on the nutter front (albeit that because there are so few kids out playing on the streets, if yours do, they are statistically more likely to be snatched than they were in the 1970s) but disagree on the car front. I used to ride my pony around our village as a child, and on the 'main' road where my pony's field was, I might get 2 or 3 cars pass me in the 2 mins it took to ride on this road into the village. Now it would be more like 20 cars, plus more HGVs. I used to ride back to the field on this road bareback (having dropped my saddle off at home). No way would I contemplate that now!

Most of those deaths will be the vulnerable teenagers involved in gangs/drugs though Tantrums. It's absolutely tragic for those young people but the general population is not at a higher risk of violent death. These attacks are very rarely random.

Depends on where you are. It's not more dangerous except for more cars on the road where I am - DD has more freedom than I did back in the 90s. There's no gangs or knife crime (sometimes drug related violence but nothing involving children/teens) where I am, the biggest danger to children is online I reckon, grooming and bullying and negative influences.

I think it is more dangerous. There are more drug addicts now than in the 80's. Now crystal meth has hit areas
The level of violence has increased.
I only saw beggars and homelessness in the city as a child, now it is a very local problem.
I unfortunately travel on public transport most night, you'd write a book on the carry on.
There is no fear or consequence anymore, not many Garda on the street but lots of poverty and addiction.
The random rapes in Dublin has skyrocketed in the past decade.
Online is dangerous for DC too.

Not to be shot down. There are also people with serious dangerous MH issues living within society, there is a serious lack of support and care.
The story below was heartbreaking a young man killed with a crow bar by his psychotic neighbour.
www.thejournal.ie/richard-mclaughlin-courts-4726710-Jul2019/

In general, I suppose it is more dangerous nowadays, but in different ways. I remember asking my parents if they had the "stranger danger" talk in the 1950s: they said they did to some extent, but then children would often be going into other people's houses unsupervised. My dad told me that a stranger told him to "go into that house, and he'd be there shortly" (this chap was savvy enough not to be seen going into the house with him). People were less aware of the risk of this.

Something not mentioned so far are building sites: nowadays they're usually very fenced off and hard (not impossible, granted) to get into. Ditto railway lines: do children trespass on them these days (or is that just Extinction Rebellion)?

I'm sure in ye olde days kids were climbing scaffolding, swimming in the open seas, skating on frozen ponds, pretending railway sleepers were stepping stones, flying kites into overhead power lines... they died of different things.

I worry more about drugs. I think its rife.
In the early 90s me and my mates were dabbling with cider/strawberry concorde/ thunderbird and sampling the odd spiff by the age of 14.
I work with young people who are doing all that at 12/13 and moving on to ketamine and cocaine by 14. Quite a few getting out of the depth with county lines drug dealimg too

I’m 43. In my childhood in my parents culdesac and road two in every three houses had one car, the others didn’t have cars. Nobody had two cars in one household.
Now there isn’t a house without at least one car, most have two and a few three. As a result there is almost continuous traffic and no chance of crossing unless you go between parked cars.

My 12 year old is allowed to buy things at the corner shop or take the dog for walks. She can walk to school and to play at her friends houses. I let her go out, so long as it's nearby and she keeps me posted. Not sure about 10yos, because mine is autistic and wouldn't let her out just yet.