Study - Unsafe to cross the street if you are under 14

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At What Age Can Kids Safely Cross the Street

I think it's unsafe to cross the street at any age, thanks to distracted driving, drivers having zero patience and their having dog feces for brains. f**k society and f**k them.

The one person who died from traffic when I was at school was over 14 and wasn't crossing the road (he was going along an unlit country lane at night). I crossed multiple roads every weekday to get to and from school and yet here I am. As is everyone else who did the same thing.

I wonder how much experience those kids had crossing roads. Isn't it the case in the US that kids get a bus to and from school and all traffic has to stop? The kids won't be used to moving traffic if they've only ever experienced it stopping for them.

Phah! I never got run over as a child. But when I was in my mid 20s I was hit by a car, totally my fault as well.

They were wrong, it's not safe at any age. ALOT of people in my town don't care about the law, there been a few people running through a stop light & a stop sign. Where the police when you need them? More than five years ago, I almost got run over a few times, once I gotten too close & another time, I was badly shaken.

Education people, education!

I remember how they taught us in preschool:
Before entering the street look left(traffic closest to where you are), right and left again. No car there or all of the cars stopped/are stopping? You can go. In the middle of street look right again, to make sure no new danger apeared.
Or something like that.
Of course in countries with different traffic side it would be the other way around, left=right, right=left.

I was surprised when I discovered my younger cousin never heard about the rules despite being 11 year old.

From what I seen though the most stupid and clueless people crossing the road are some adult woman 60+ that never had a driving license and probably never will. They can get on the road right before the car when you least expect it. Yeah, sure - there is a rule a person on the "zebra" have priority but you must be stupid thinking a car going 50km/h (allowed speed) will stop within 2 meters because you suddenly figured you are going to cross the road despite not signaling it at all(walking the sidewalk then going right on the street without even looking around). Having priority doesn't excuse you from using common sense and common sense includes the rule they taught me at preschool - to look around before entering the street. I bet people 60+ were never taught the rule in preschool just like my young cousin wasn't. I got lucky they taught it when I was attending one.

Parents around where I work are terrible about this. They let kids barely out of diapers (and some still in diapers) cross the street completely unaided. They never hold their hand or anything. They teach the kids bad crossing habits like entering the street without pausing and looking, crossing at random places instead of crosswalks, crossing against traffic lights, stopping to talk to someone on the other side while standing in the middle of the street, etc. It really is terrible.

They also teach them to cut through busy parking lots.

It's unsafe to cross the street at any age, because some people don't care whether we live or die.

When I'm out, I always look left & right, it's the stupid driver's fault, people around my town don't care.

Crossing a street at any age is potentially harmful, BUT at any age where someone becomes aware that they can be squashed by a car and can also practice situational awareness before and during crossings should be okay. That age should be well under 14.

ALOT of people don't want to stop, if you wait then you will be there for hours. In my town, it's 50/50 alot of people don't care & can be rude & there are good people too that are very caring.

around here in southern california you have to be able to read and predict traffic just to enter a crosswalk on a "walk" signal, and mostly only large intersections have crosswalk signals. seriously, if you walk enough, it appears at least a fifth of drivers regularly don't use their turn signals in a timely fashion or at all(just recently saw someone make a hard right through three lanes of traffic while only turning on their turn signal after cutting off the first two... not to mention, they almost got t-boned.), many don't look both ways before cutting through a crosswalk(when you look into a drivers dash[sometimes it means looking behind over your shoulder depending on which corner of the street you're on] and see they've never made eye contact, you have to know not to enter the crosswalk even when it says "walk", because "walk" coincides when the lane they're staring at will stop and allow them to turn.), and drive as bad as if they've had a couple shots of hard liquor(its notable that many drivers around here are rather poor for focus when the average parking lot has many parked cars that have at least some body damage, if not heavy damage... and being aware that many of the higher end cars are owned by the sort that have the money to just have their status symbols repaired asap whenever they get a new munch or scrape somewhere or another.).

the driving tests around here are supposedly exceptionally easy from accounts of those that drive responsibly, and it's not uncommon to hear of people boast that it took them many attempts while shamelessly celebrating their eventual acquisition of their license(while they're the same who'll come to whinge incessantly for getting traffic tickets until they lose their license for being unable to pay them all). seriously, the manual may say driving is a privilege, but around here it seems it is treated as a right until a driver either kills someone or can't pay off their fines.

much of the problem seems to be the amount of available technology and distractions in the modern vehicle that get used illegally after a quick look around to see if there are any police vehicles about, and noting that there are none. not to mention, people seem to hope technicalities will save them if a cop says they were texting and driving when in fact they were just reading into the weather for the next three weeks out or looking at some app when charged with the $300 fine that's really just for staring at their phone instead of the road. though, that's not even accounting for the occasional scenes of people driving with a loaded plate of food, a fork and knife while steering with one elbow and staring down and digging into the feast resting upon their crotch, or those doing hygiene or beauty regimens in the rear view mirror who lurch forward into an intersection on a red light when a vehicle impatiently moves forward a little in their peripheral.

the only thing that is particularly new, is that electric cars are rather silent while creeping(especially high end electric cars like those by tesla), so they can sneak up on and startle someone who's caught up in thought on the side of the road, and conditioned to using their ears to notice the approach of a common vehicle from behind while walking through a neighborhood or someplace where traffic moves slowly... so it'd not be surprising if those who meander and walk right into the street if they don't sense a car nearby might get hit by such vehicles from behind.