Where do the children play?

In the US cars jockey for space with guns to claim the title of leading cause of dead kids.

But we often forget that cars kill kids at an astonishing rate -even though kids stopped playing outside-. In that light, the bloodbath that is American suburbia becomes much more clear. When pedestrian deaths go up even as miles walked (in aggregate) goes down, the situation is even more dire than it seems.

My kids play outside. But we moved to the Netherlands so they could. And even here, large SUVs and even -bafflingly- giant American Dodge Rams are becoming distressingly common.

This is an aside. Yesterday I was in a shopping centre (ie a mall) and a bunch of kids ran through the food court, maybe 10 of them all around the 9-12

A grumpy lady shouted at them "kids you shouldnt be running!"

I turned to whom I was eating with and our discussion could be summarised as "kids should be running. The problem isn't they're running, the problem isn't even directly where they're running. Where they're running is a symptom of them having no where else to run"

Sorry, but no. You shouldn't be running in crowded areas like food courts (or indoor areas not specifically created for athletics), and playing smug semantic arguments like that doesn't help.

The kids aren't running because they're unable to go outside. They're running because no one's been enforcing that they act within the standards of basic decency.

Kids should be screaming and singing sometimes, but you wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them.

>and playing smug semantic arguments like that doesn't help.

How is it semantic? They go outside and now they are running in a giant parking lot. They go a bit further and now you're a bad parent for not keeping an eye on your kid. Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent.

There's no winning here.

>you wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them.

I don't consider a mall the equivalent of a libary in this situation.

If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I would argue you are a bad parent. That seems like asking for an accident.

> Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent.

Yes. If this is the alternative to playing in parking lots that comes to your mind first, I really wonder what kind of experiences you had.

> There's no winning here.

Ever heard of parks?