Was I unreasonable to let my friend walk to the train station alone on a night out?

[Anonymous2003]

I'm aware that the title sounds very bad and I'm thinking I may get a lot of angry comments. Last month, my friends and I went out for drinks in the city centre for my birthday. None of us bar one live in the city, and public transport is not great here with trains being few and far between. Since we went out around 4pm, I wasn't planning on us staying out too late but we didn't make any 'set in stone' plans on what time to go home.
3 of us (myself, Friend 1 and Friend 2) live in the same general direction, with the last 2 trains going home in that direction being at 9pm and then 10.50pm.
After we had our meal we went to a bar round 7.30pm and it didn't feel like we were there very long before Friend A said she should be going soon to get the 9pm train as she didn't want her mum to pick her up from the train station late at night.
The atmosphere was only starting to be good and neither me nor the others wanted to leave so early. Friend 1 hadn't had many drinks and was nowhere near drunk. Friend 2 offered to get the train home with her at 9, Friend 1 declined. We offered to walk her to the station (20 minute walk each way for us which is quite lengthy) and she declined. Friend 1 said she would walk to the station alone while talking on the phone to a relative to feel safe.
We said goodbye and texted her soon after to make sure she got on the train okay, she told us she did but had gotten lost on the way there.
We are going out again this week and she said she will try to get a lift home to save her walking alone.
Were we bad friends to not go with her? It's not like we didn't offer but I still feel a tad guilty despite it being relatively early in the evening. I don't plan on doing this again.

Ummm. If I never walked places alone after 9pm I would never go out.

You need to be aware of personal safety but come on! Surely at 9pm on a Saturday evening lots of people would be going to and from the station?

You’re very lucky and/or live in a very safe place. I have been attacked on the streets four times. Two of those times I was with a friend and two I was a teenager and it wasn’t even night, just dark winter evenings. There’s nothing hysterical about it; women are often unsafe.

I would be mightily pissed off if my friends ‘insisted’ on ordering a taxi for me for a 20 minute walk at 8.30pm.

Dd is 19 and at university in a city, she walks practically everywhere and I doubt her friends always escort her. If they're out late and are drunk they get Ubers back to the accommodation.

A fully grown woman doesn't need escorting to a train station in the city at 9pm! I'd imagine it's much safer to be in a busy city than somewhere remote having to walk. You're overthinking this.

Indeed. Sometimes I am still making my way home from work at that time.

I wouldn't think twice about a 1 mile walk through a city centre at 8.30pm. I most definitely wouldn't expect to be escorted to the station by my friends, if they were still enjoying their evening out.

I might be pissed off if the pre-agreed arrangement was that everyone would be going to the station at 9pm, and then the others changed their minds, if I had been wary of making the walk, but that wasn't the case here.

You did nothing wrong OP!

🙄🙄

Of course you did nothing wrong. You can't be expected to take 40 minutes out of your evening to walk someone to the station. If she's worried about walking alone she can just get a taxi to the station, surely? Guessing you can't have Uber where you are but you must have taxis, no?

In fairness, getting a taxi at such short notice can be a challenge at 8.30pm on a Friday night, but it's not impossible

Given how young and unsteetwise you all are I think YABU and you should have found a way to walk your friend to the station. Especially on a Saturday night when she’s been drinking.

Who with any common sense would think walking alone to a train station On Her Phone is a safety measure! It’s the opposite. Increases risk of robbery, assault. You should have all chipped in for an Uber for her or walked her to the station then found another bar near there.

I'm assuming she left around 8.30pm. There would no doubt be people around. She also declined any offers of help, as I would have done. YANBU

When she said about not wanting to walk alone the next time did you remind her you gave her other options so she didn’t have to do that but she insisted?
Don’t feel bad, you all tried to offer to go with her but she said no.

I can't see what you did wrong. If she wants to leave that early it's on her to either get a taxi or uber to the station or walk there.

If you had accompanied her then the night out would have been over before 9.

I used to get the train home from work at that time. You didn’t do anything wrong.

No I didn't. I didn't detect raging passive aggression when she said this and so for me to bring up last time could turn it into an issue that perhaps never existed. If she was really bothered about what happened I would rather she say it outright, but she hasn't.

What a load of patronising nonsense. I’m a grown woman who is quite capable of walking myself home or to a station and , personally I would find this insulting and infantilising. Fair enough a follow up text to see I was ok but otherwise I would expect my decision for myself to be respected. I refuse to live my life in terror and restriction because of some men.

I'm going a bit off topic but I was noseying and found the website of this service. It's called 'Strut Safe', is UK-wide and the volunteers actually stay on the phone with you as you walk home alone. They don't actually escort you home like I thought. Interesting as a few people on this thread have said that they believe talking on the phone while walking is actually counterproductive.

Her saying she got lost is manipulative.

Yes, if it's the nearest city centre why did she get lost? Is she unfamiliar with it?

No, you did nothing wrong. She wanted to go on her own. She is presumably an adult. You don't have to right to force her to have company if she doesn't feel the need for it.

I walk around on my own a lot, including at night. I'm not frightened of doing so and I would be very irritated if someone tried to stop me.

I think it's a damaging message to send to women and girls that they can't walk through a busy town centre or residential area at 9pm. The biggest risk to women by far is men they know and often live with. I think curbing women's independence by fostering the idea that they can't go outside alone after dark is far more damaging than the very small risk of walking somewhere busy by themselves.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't risk assess and take precautions. I used to finish work at 9pm on late night shopping day in the city centre. We all happily went our separate ways to walk home or catch the bus and anyone who thought that was unsafe would have been considered a bit odd. I did take the longer route home those evenings though rather than the short cut through the park. It would have been stupid to wander through a large mostly empty park by myself where a woman had previously been raped.

This. Yes, attacks by strangers can happen, but it's rare and I'd far rather take the tiny risk than limit my life by refusing to walk alone.

I'm 30
My mom still came to pick me up from a late night at work, which I could have got home from, because she didn't want me to walk through town late
Some parents aren't MNers who abandon their children the moment they turn 18

You offered. She turned you down. You have clearly done nothing wrong.

And unless it is a dangerous area, I wouldn't even have offered!

Not picking up your 30yo children from a night out doesn't mean you have abandoned them.

My parents let me move to France when I was 19 for university, they must be abominable abandoners.