Where do the children play?

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.

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"

A nearby huge city had a mall. City being 30k people. Yet left in that mall, with 10 friends, I'd run there too.. until chastised. No real difference 50 years ago, in a rural area with a mall than now.

Groups of kids running tend to bump into things, fall into people, excited kids aren't known for taking care. It's been typical for at least going back to the 50s to stop that.

It's also why kids are typically told to stop running around a house.. and to go outside.

So strongly disagree that it is a symptom of no where else to run. Of course, I find it sad if kids have no place to go run.

Local parks can help with this in urban areas.