The Safety Dance

We have already established that Warwick Cairns is a man after my own heart.  He is also, at it happens, a man after my own cake but it was freely offered and I won't hold that against him.

Having polished off his first book, About The Size Of It, last week I turned this week to his new offering, How To Live Dangerously.  It is an impassioned manifesto pleading against our modern obsession with safety.  It is also very funny.

I was born in 1970.  I was walking to school on my own before the age of 10.  That was nothing special in those days.  I was riding a bike along busy roads without a helmet from a similar age.  I spent a fair amount of time out and about unsupervised because that's what you did back then.  I appear to have survived unscathed, and I suspect most kids today would manage to do likewise, if they were given the chance.

One frightening statistic in the book, and one that got me thinking I should be turfing my kids out onto the streets, was this.  In 1970 the typical 9-year-old girl would have been free to walk over 900 yards away from her front door, whether that be the walk to school, to a friend's house or to the local park.  It was the distance that most kids were allowed out.  By 1997 that distance had reduced to just over 300 yards.  Today, Cairns suggests, most won't get further than the front gate.

And why not?  Are there more child snatchers, drunk drivers, weirdos and dangers than 30 years ago?  Not really.  If anything things are safer now.  It is our attitudes that have changed.  We are frightened of things that, in all likelihood, won't happen.

Millions of people in this country smoke, something we all know is highly likely to kill you.  Big danger, but most smokers ignore it.  However, loads of people, many of them smokers, absolutely shit themselves at the thought of getting on a plane.  Something you'd have to do every day for 26,000 years to actually be involved in a crash.  Why do they worry about the latter when the former is the thing that will kill them?

I also love Warwick's argument that in order to make the world safer we need to make it more dangerous.  He cites the case of the Dutch region of Friesland, where a traffic safety officer called Hans Moderman managed to convince the authorities to remove all road signs, markings and anything separating the road from the pavement.  Rather than ensuing death and chaos the roads have become safer.  It was introduced in the town of Drachten in 2002. Since the new system came in they have had no road accidents.  And what's more the 22,000 cars coming into the town every day rarely have to struggle through traffic jams.

The theory is wonderfully beautiful.  Because everyone using the road has to be more careful, they have fewer accidents.  The system seems to have worked everywhere it was introduced.

While reading HTLD I was reminded a great deal of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  Although two very different subjects they both present a series of case studies and wrap them up in an accessible and interesting narrative.  HTLD is an easy read, almost effortless, but is chock full of sound argument and fascinating information.

This is an important book.  The people who make our laws, rules and guidelines should all be forced to read it.

The Warwick Cairns love-in will continue next week when I interview him for the blog.  If you have any questions you want to ask then leave a comment here.

Comments

[Steerforth]

I only half-agree with the point made about letting children go out on their own. Obviously it is quite wrong to keep children indoors all of the time and some of my happiest childhood memories are of playing in the street until dusk. However, child pedestrian fatalities were much higher in the 70s, even though there were fewer cars. I would feel very unhappy letting my sons go out unaccompanied near main roads. Part of the answer is to create more car-free areas and have restricted speed limits in residential zones.

As far as child molesters go, it's probably true that the number of paedophiles hasn't changed over the years and that you're more likely to be assaulted by someone you know. However, as far as 'stranger danger' is concerned, it is much easier to abduct a child than it was 100 years ago, so parents aren't being completely irrational.

However, a society in which children spend most of their time playing computer games, watching television and eating junk food seems too high a price to pay for safety.

[Jane E]

See also: The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel. She discusses the paradox - that we have both much higher and lower expectations of our children. For example, that they must get into Harvard but at the same time they don't have to do dishes if it interferes with their schoolwork. So while parents these days have extremely high expectations of their children, these same children aren't given the challenges on a day-to-day basis (eg: juggling household chores with school work) that would give them the strength to achieve these high expectations. As a result, many children end up depressed because they can't achieve what is expected of them and have don't have skills to deal with life's daily disappointments and struggles. It is probably more relevant in the American context but still very interesting.

[Lance]

I was born in 1970 too. I have a real bee in my bonnet about this, although I have no children of my own - my other half is a primary teacher and I have 2 young nephews.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment of the book (I also love Gladwell's books Blink and Tipping Point btw).
I find it most disconcerting that there are never any children playing on the grass outside the home I grew up in despite the street being full of young families. When I was a kid there were always at least 2 soccor games and one round of 'Block' or me and Flea Bag (now an ccountant)would be playing Doctor Who or Starsky & Hutch.
At age 10 a gang of us would re-enact 'the Eagle Has Landed' in the woods.
The Golfers were in far more danger than we were.

I have to say Steerforth - this time I just can't see your arguments.

Everyone was probably driving drunk in the 1970s which probably accounts for a large slice of the fatalities, plus road deaths have stabilised due to a steady stream of varied road management over the years and how on earth can child abduction (an extremely rare occurance) be easier if children aren't leaving the house?!
Children are at most risk from folks in their own family/social circle and where (as we constantly told)is the most dangerous place to be as far as accidents are concerned?

[Steerforth]

Re: child abduction, it's easier in the sense that 100 years ago, it would have been hard to spirit a child away from an area quickly and without attracting a lot of attention from neighbours and friends.

[lance]

Apologies - I thought we were comparing 70's to present day there.

Have any of you come across 'The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things' by Barry Glassner?

It covers some similar ground.

[Scott Pack]

Hmm, I'm not so sure Steerforth. Cairns has calculated that if you actually grew tired of your kids and wanted them to be abducted you'd have to lock them out of the house for 200,000 years before they'd get taken, and even then you'd get them back safely within 24 hours. An extreme way of illustrating the statistic but it makes you think.

No one wants their kids to be in any great danger but we are, as a nation, quite possibly too protective. I recall someone being amazed that I let my son go to the loo by himself in a restaurant when he was about 7. I was amazed that they were amazed.

Every child is different of course. When Ethan wants to climb a tree my gut instinct is that it is dangerous but I'd rather he climbs a tree than plays a computer game. Room for both, of course.

I reckon they can cope with a few cuts and bruises.

I love the traffic examples though, they really make you think.

[Joseph Devon]

"Freakonomics" has a lot of fun stuff like this too. For example, let's say your child has two friends (let's hope your kid has more friends than this but that's not important right now, pay attention) and you know that the parents of one of these friends owns a handgun while the parents of the other have a swimming pool. Statistically speaking, which friend's house would you feel safer letting your child visit?

[Steerforth]

Apologies for wheeling out the cliche about lies, damned lies and statistics, but I think the 200,000 years figure is nonsense. I was an undergraduate at Lampeter - the smallest university college in Britain, with only 750 students. In a country with a population of around 58,000,000 the chances of me bumping into any of my fellow students outside the immediate area was miniscule, but time and time again I kept meeting people in the most improbable places: Boots in Richmond, Bristol, my friend's next-door neighbour's house, Winchester (he was a Geordie) etc. The worst case was when I sneaked off to Paris with a girl and was spotted outside the Louvre. Statistically, these encounters shouldn't have happened.

I don't think I'm paranoid about paedophiles. I remember the anti-paedophile riots a few years ago and they were a sorry spectacle (a woman's house had 'Pedos Out!' sprayed on her wall because some chav didn't know what a paediatrician was). However, I think our children live in an unnatural environment.

I let my sons climb trees and frequently take them to the beach or woods, where they can run around and explore. However, I don't feel confident about the urban environment. The sorts of communities where everyone knows each other are rare these days and I can't feel confident that other people will be looking out for my kids. Also, where I live there are quite a few chavvy boy racers who love skidding around the corner. A few years ago one of them wrote my car off, so I'm not willing to expose my sons to people like that.

There is an answer. Every year the road next to mine has a street party and it's closed to traffic. People come out of their houses, children play in the street (including my boys) and the world suddenly seems a better place. I've worked out that the road could be permanently closed without buggering up the traffic, but no-one in the local council is interested. What a shame.

So to conclude this rambling post, I agree that the odds of children being abducted or run over are low, but it's not enough to tell parents to be more rational. I think that most people would be happy if we were provided with the sort of spaces that children enjoyed 100 years ago. If I was a dictator I would ensure that no child was further than 5 minutes' walk from a green space where they could climb trees, find tadpoles and do all of that 'jumpers for goalposts' stuff.

[Joseph Devon]

This is turning into one of those conversations where I basically agree with everyone. I love books like HTLD (it's fast approaching on my reading list) and statistics are fun and enlightening, but then I agree with Steer, although I'd quote Homer Simpson's "People can come up with statistics to prove anything, forty percent of people know that." Statistics have almost no relevance to the individual. For a number of reasons. One of which is that it's always possible that you'll be on the strange end of the odds.
And then there's the notion that the choices of the individual can start to effect statistics. I've read this post and the comments a few times now, and if road deaths are down in recent years, isn't it possible that overprotective parents are the reason why? In other words, something is influencing these numbers. It's like if everyone took the statistics on being struck by lightning to heart and decided that, since the odds of being hit by a lightning bolt were so low, they could safely stand on the roof during every thunderstorm and wave a golf club in the air. Eventually these actions would change the statistics about getting struck by lightning.
In the end, I'm not real big on overprotection, statistics are fun, and the Friesland experiment is very interesting (if only because, for an American, the name of this region has a Wonka-like air of whimsy, like if it were called Icecreamville). But Friesland might only be proof that the Dutch are terribly good drivers compared to the rest of us.

[damian mcnicholl]

Very interesting post, Scott. And an interesting book I'm sure.
I've been thinking about this and, as an Irishman who also became an American and live here now, I think this all boils down to the Americanization of Europe, really.
It's happening in so many things. Parents here are overly anxious and I see them meeting their children at the ends of their driveways after school. (The house is twenty yards away as often as not.) Now it's come to Britain, etc. It's a bit of a shame really.

The next thing you'll be dealing with over there are what's called "helicopter parents" over here. That's the next phase when the overprotected children go off to Harvard, Georgetown or wherever and the parents want to be totally involved in their studies and, I joke not, their careers. Some companies even have open days for parents now just to get them off their backs.

[Scott Pack]

Glad to see this post, and this book, has sparked a bit of debate. I don't think Cairns is putting forward his statistics in a cold, hard scientific sense; he is using them as illustrations and making those illustrations as amusing as possible. They certainly get you thinking, which is the whole point.

It is also a very balanced picture, as he offers plenty of examples of life's dangers but tries to put them into context.

It really is a thought provoking read and watch out for quite a bit of publicity in the coming weeks.

[lance]

Well we couldn't have f*cking Soreen hogging ALL the blog limelight could we?!