I'm sorry for your experience, but this is extremely location dependent.
Walking home from school in many areas is perfectly safe. In other areas it's not. Making blanket statements or restrictions without context doesn't make sense.
So you’re conceding this is location dependent. So in effect you’re saying the article is also location dependent? Pick one. If you knew the statistics on kidnapping or missing children in the US, you would not think of this as a “life-style” choice. By the way, 80% of US population live in urban areas so your experience living in 20% is not representative.
> So in effect you’re saying the article is also location dependent?
The article is literally about how location effects are driving the changes.
> Pick one. If you knew the statistics on kidnapping in the US, you would not think of this as a “life-style” choice.
Child abduction is extremely rare in the United States.
You might be confusing sensational headlines with statistics. It's common to report missing children or parental disputes as kidnapping, which people conflate with children being abducted off the street
For some perspective: The number of children abducted by strangers in the United States every year is similar to the number of children who die from head injuries from riding a bike: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8909479/
More people in the United States die from lightning strikes every year.
There aren’t many places in the US where it is safe AND practical for kids to walk home. If you don’t understand this, then you basically live in a bubble.
this is simply not true. I personally am in 12th town I’ve lived in the last 25 years, every single place I lived was walkable to school. it might just be you that lives in a bubble :)
The statics on kidnapped or missing children in the US say most are taken by a family member, not by a stranger in public. I rode my bike to school in fifth grade but had to stop because of my mom's anxiety.
You seem to be missing the point. In the vast majority of cases locations being unsuitable for walking/cycling to school isn't an immutable law of nature - it's a result of deliberate choices made by humans.
Building primarily low-density car-dependent suburbs is a choice. Building horribly oversized car infrastructure is a choice. Not building bike or pedestrian infrastructure is a choice. Building one megaschool instead of a handful of smaller local schools is a choice.
People voted to have slightly lower taxes and spend a few hours a week waiting in the pickup line. That's a lifestyle choice, even if they weren't aware they were making it.
Walking home from school in many areas is perfectly safe. In other areas it's not. Making blanket statements or restrictions without context doesn't make sense.