I would love to be able to do this with my 3yo son...but there are two things stopping me: Cars and helicopter parent culture.
Cars, and the entitled culture we have fostered around them, make streets hostile to pedestrians and likely fatal to small children, even if children followed the laws and common sense. I experience it practically daily. Every time I cross the street at a marked intersection, cars will stop for me 9/10 times. At unmarked intersections, its more like 5/10. Crossing at a stoplight with a walk signal on is still precarious because of the tendency of many drivers to blow through crosswalks without stopping so they can turn right on red. Every single day I experience a situation that could be fatal to a less visible child with a more fragile body and slightly worse situational awareness. No way.
The second problem is the CPS story. My neighborhood is extremely safe, but the parents here are borderline psychotic about helicoptering their way through their children's lives. Every time I take my kid to a playground, I end up witnessing helicopter parents freaking out about how my kid will climb a ladder by himself or jump off of a piece of equipment by himself... sometimes they swoop in to "parent" for me...and other times they will chew me out for being so irresponsible as to let my kid learn his own boundaries. As much as I respect the mission of CPS, I've heard enough horror stories about their enforcement of parenting methodology that I wouldn't ever risk having them called because my kid walked to the park by himself.
I think car culture also means that everything is further away. I grew up in a small town in the Netherlands and from a young age I'd walk/bike everywhere (sports training, friends' places, etc.). When everything is close by, it's easy for parents to gradually give children more space and responsibilities. For example, at a very young age I was only allowed to walk/bike to the end of the street. Then, later, I started walking to school. Then, later still, I'd bike to my grandparents in the neighboring town and so on to taking public transport to the city to go to secondary school. If you have to drive your children everywhere it becomes difficult to gradually give them more independence in this way.
Before you put too much blame on car culture you should know a few things about Japan. First, cars are cheap, and lots of people drive. However, lots of the same people also have a bicycle which they use for short trips including grocery shopping. People also walk. This means drivers have more empathy for people not in cars. Second, the speed limits are low. Some decent looking roads are 50 kph whereas in America they would be 45 mph, about 50 percent faster. Third, children walking to and from school wear fluorescent helmets. This is a safety precaution American children would not tolerate for themselves or on others.
This means drivers have more empathy for people not in cars.
The point you make is extremely important. In my dreams:
People caught not yielding to pedestrians are sentenced to walking 3 miles a day for a month on busy city streets. I do this every day (4 miles), and I can tell you, there is not a day that goes by that I see the most horrible behavior from drivers. I can only assume, since I don't believe it's because they are all horrible people, they just have no empathy for pedestrians and can't imagine the consequences of their behavior.
Like the mom-looking lady that turned left with me in her path in the cross walk. She saw me. Turned anyway. Stopped in the lane with oncoming traffic and pushed into the cross walk (directly toward me) and looked exasperated as to why I was in her way. Does anyone thing, if a car was about to ram her that she wouldn't sacrifice me? I don't.
I wish adult joggers in US would please wear reflective something when running on street.
Few days ago I pissed off a biker and a jogger because I didn't see them in time to stop at a safe distance away from them.
Guess what? BOTH were wearing BLACK shirt/shorts. Because they were running from my 10 oclock to 2 oclock (outside of cone of headlights), I just couldn’t see them.
A high percentage of people you see in the Seoul subways actually own cars. Lots of office workers leave their sedans/suvs in the garages of their highrise apartment complexes on regular workdays. They usually walk/bus/subway to/from work. This is because of the crush of traffic at rush hour. You just end up stressed out if you try to drive around in Seoul at rush hour in certain areas. Much less stress/time if you just walk/subway.
The cars are usually driven on weekends for family trip.
Similar situation in many German cities. Or, if you work in one suburb and live in another, you drive to work, but then whenever you go shopping or anything you walk/take bus/metro/etc.
supporting anecdote: while jogging in Seattle, I got hit by a cop car turning right on red. only fell to the ground, no injuries (except bumper marks!), but I could imagine a heavy car like that not even registering a little kid hitting it at 5mph.
I've heard this before and I have to wonder, do stop signs also seem insane to you? Because right on red is no different. You stop, look both ways, and go if it's safe to do so.
This is not how American drivers deal with it. When they don't see an immediate risk of hitting someone, most don't bother stopping at red lights when they want to turn right on red, which is not the case with stops.
Yes, so it basically turns an intersection with traffic lights into one without. The point of a red light is that it removes the guesswork, and gives people going in other directions the guarantee that the stopped traffic won't move. Right on red throw all that out of the window.
I learned to drive in a country that didn't have right on red, have now lived 9 years in countries that do.
It makes perfect sense, and it's very hard to understand why it wouldn't be allowed. As the other comments have said, it's a hard stop, so you wait until it's clear before going.
(Obviously, for countries that drive on the left, it would be left on red)
I agree entirely, I also have an issue with "yield on green".
Green means "go" at 99% of the lights I run into. Then there's that one left turn I make that's "yield on green" and I'm not supposed to turn. I'm not surprised at all that the intersection has the most accidents annually. I don't think many people are used to yield-on-green lights... so many T-bones its amazing they haven't changed the traffic flow.
It's a rarity in my part of the state. There are only 2 intersections that don't have protected left turns and are yield-on-green. They both have triangular signs stating they are yield-on-green and those signs get ignored.
I've been honked at and nearly rear-ended because I yield-on-green on protected turns at unfamiliar lights where I expect them to be yield-on-green (I assume any lane without a dedicated arrow light to be yield-on-green.)
The intersections around here give opposite sides protected left turns, then normal straight traffic flow. None but the "weird two" are yield-on-green and those two intersections, as a result, have a ton of accidents caused by people not yielding properly.
It probably wouldn't be as big of an issue if every other light in the town was yield-on-green instead of protected. It's the fact that those two lights are the only "special" ones that I think causes the problem. Since everyone is used to having a protected turn, people ignore the "yield on green" sign and turn into oncoming traffic (whom they think have a red light).
They have that here in The Netherlands for bikes: both the cyclist and the driver get green, but the driver must yield to the cyclist (yield to the right).
Countless times I've been almost hit and then screamed at by clueless drivers.
Same in Denmark, but I've not yet seen a near miss.
In the UK, when the pedestrian has a green man all road traffic has a red light, without exception. (Same for cycle paths crossing roads, but they're rare.)
I'd guess foreign drivers would get this wrong in NL, DK etc. Turning right and thinking "the pedestrian has seen me, I have a green light, they will wait" when the pedestrian is thinking "they've seen me, I have green, I can cross".
They removed all the "Yield / Unprotected Left Turn" lights in my town, just for this reason. People simply don't understand. It's a bummer to sit and wait, but it does save lives.
I guess I don't even follow what this means, does every single stop light where someone could possibly turn left now have the green arrow in your town? That seems ridiculous to me, coming from a city where thousands or tens of thousands of stoplights would need to be retrofitted just because people don't know how to turn left on a two way street.
Exactly. If I had a reasonable expectation that >99% of the drivers obeyed the law, I wouldn't feel too hesitant to let my 3yo cross the street on his own. He knows how to look both ways, and cross when people have stopped. Even right-on-red is safe at face value. But I don't even believe that 5% of drivers obey all of the laws that protect crossing pedestrians. It's almost as if they don't expect pedestrians to exist.
Cars, and the entitled culture we have fostered around them, make streets hostile to pedestrians and likely fatal to small children, even if children followed the laws and common sense. I experience it practically daily. Every time I cross the street at a marked intersection, cars will stop for me 9/10 times. At unmarked intersections, its more like 5/10. Crossing at a stoplight with a walk signal on is still precarious because of the tendency of many drivers to blow through crosswalks without stopping so they can turn right on red. Every single day I experience a situation that could be fatal to a less visible child with a more fragile body and slightly worse situational awareness. No way.
The second problem is the CPS story. My neighborhood is extremely safe, but the parents here are borderline psychotic about helicoptering their way through their children's lives. Every time I take my kid to a playground, I end up witnessing helicopter parents freaking out about how my kid will climb a ladder by himself or jump off of a piece of equipment by himself... sometimes they swoop in to "parent" for me...and other times they will chew me out for being so irresponsible as to let my kid learn his own boundaries. As much as I respect the mission of CPS, I've heard enough horror stories about their enforcement of parenting methodology that I wouldn't ever risk having them called because my kid walked to the park by himself.
It's a shame.