Originally Posted by
livedarklions
It sounds like your neighborhood is unusual in not having any back roads around the shopping centers.
What got me into biking at a young age was precisely that I could ride around without my parents on city streets and go out on my own, which I was doing plenty of by the time I was 11.
I really don't buy any arguments that drivers were safer then, I think it's nonsense. There's a helicopter parenting ethos that's in place now that is driving kids towards electronics their parents can't really monitor to get any sense of independence.
I've never been to your neighborhood--I won't second-guess you on whether you would do better by teaching your kid how to deal with the inattentive drivers herself--given the layout you describe, that might be an impossible task at her age. She will, however, need to learn it eventually.
I am hardly the helicopter parent type... She is able to walk to the library, ice cream shop or any of the stores in our area...
You don't buy it... If you think that cell phone usage has had no impact on local driving, you're not paying attention. I was taken down (only) twice by cars over many thousands of miles during the 1970s. Now, older, slower and wiser, I have had extremely close calls in a crazy per mile ratio, since starting to ride again in 2015.
Need to learn it eventually? Americans need to learn to ride bikes in urban sprawl? Bikes are mostly recreational in the US. Unless we do something constructive to make kid/commuter local type riding safer, more kids will have to be chauffeured around, even more than they are currently. Perhaps it is to big an undertaking for the perceived benefit. That ship may have already sailed...