Life

Stranger Danger!

We're carless and curious. Do vehicles really protect children?

By Alan Durning, 9 Jan 2007, TheTyee.ca

Child

Risks of too much safety?

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[Editor's note: this is the third in an occasional series written by Alan Durning, head of Sightline think-tank in Seattle. He and his family are living car-free for a year, and he's writing a series about how they're faring.]

The day our trusty old family car finally met its demise, my wife Amy and I decided -- with the (albeit reluctant) support of our three children -- to remain without a car for at least a full year. That's right: family of five living in metropolitan Seattle; busy schedule of work, school, and extracurricular activities; and no car of our own.

The kids' support for going carless was admittedly bought and paid for. Yep, we bribed middle-schoolers Peter and Kathryn with cell phones and we offered to help pay for high-schooler Gary's existing phone.

But beyond greasing the wheels for family consensus, this expenditure doubled as a way of buying our way out of a state of perpetual fear: fear that we were somehow negligent parents, sending our kids -- sometimes alone -- into the big, scary world, on foot, on bikes and on city busses. To further combat perpetual worry, we also began to examine the roots of our fears and to question their legitimacy.

In the age of Amber Alerts, JonBenet, Polly Klaas, sex-offender housing (find it in U.S. neighbourhoods here; there's no public access to sex-offender housing in Canada, but the RCMP does keep a database), for their own tracking) and sensationalist, crime-obsessed TV news, most parents don't ever want their children to lack adult supervision. In today's fast-paced, activity-filled world, where our lives are as sprawling as our cities, this usually means driving our kids everywhere. Our cars have become armour against "stranger danger."

Cell phone peace

In this environment, getting our kids cell phones did buy us peace of mind; we are able to keep track of each other better. (And we can easily afford the phones out of the savings from not owning a car.) But it's difficult to feel confident that cell phones are enough to replace constant parental chauffeuring, especially when we read terrifying headlines about crime and abduction: "Every 40 seconds in the United States, a child becomes missing or is abducted," or "Child abduction rates have risen 444 per cent since 1982 and are still rising."

No wonder there's a palpable feeling that North America is brimming with dangerous strangers: a pedophile under every rock, a child snatcher behind every tree. Parents feel it, and so do kids.

But on closer examination, it turns out parents' perception of "stranger danger" is catastrophically inflated. Our neighbourhoods are safer and friendlier than the evening news would lead us to believe. And the lock-down security regime that's resulted may do more harm than good.

Dangerous numbers

When we looked closer at the numbers, it was clear that keeping our kids "safe" indoors increased the risk of dangers that may be of greater magnitude than those associated with "setting them free." When they find themselves cooped up at home, more kids hurt themselves by playing with unlocked firearms; sampling from the medicine or liquor cabinet; or chatting with online pedophiles. Most devastating is the increased risk of obesity when our kids are sedentary -- and the health and psychological havoc it wreaks over a lifetime.

It's important to measure what really matters. Spend some time digging behind the statistics that terrify most parents and you'll quickly learn that most "missing or abducted children" are runaways. Many kids who run away do so repeatedly, as many as 40 times a year. Every one of those incidents counts in the "every 40 seconds" statistic above. Most other missing kids have simply forgotten to inform a parent or care provider of their whereabouts and turn up again, typically within an hour or two, at a friend or neighbour's house -- if reported to the police, those are recorded as abductions too.

The majority of child "abductions," meanwhile, occur when one parent in a custody dispute doesn't return the child on time to the other one. Babysitters, family friends and acquaintances abduct far more children than strangers do, and they typically do so from the child's own home, not from a dark alley or shadowy bus stop.

You'll learn that child abduction rates overall (including the custody-dispute ones) are declining (not rising 442 per cent!) and that rates of violent crime against children in general have fallen almost by half since 1973. The number of child murders in the United States has been falling for a decade and the child murder rate is probably down to levels last seen in the 1960s. (See the U.S. National Center for Juvenile Justice's 2006 annual report, for example.)

Falling for abduction

True "stranger danger" crimes are so rare that they're actually rather difficult to count. The U.S. Department of Justice has done the best tally of stranger abductions. It estimated that in 1999, there were 115 stranger abductions of children in the United States, inflicted on a population of some 75 million children. The best recent Canadian tally could only find five stranger abductions -- over two years of cases -- and only one of the perpetrators was a complete stranger. From 1988 to 1999, furthermore, the Justice Department concluded that the number of such crimes did not change in a statistically significant way. That means that the odds of abduction actually fell, as population grew.

I'm not encouraging parents to be cavalier. But let's get our priorities straight. We'd all be better off paying closer attention to the things that actually kill North American children in huge numbers, such as car crashes and other accidents, child abuse, teen suicide and childhood cancer. Instead of obsessively driving our kids everywhere, let's try to prevent conditions that begin in youth and later can take our children's lives, such as substance abuse, obesity and sexually transmitted infection. Even childhood sunburns -- the leading cause of skin cancer later in life, a disease which takes about 10,000 lives a year in the United States (that's 200 times the death toll of menacing strangers) are worth preventing before we ban bicycling to school!

The chances that my child will be abducted by a malevolent stranger are less than one in one million. That's about the same level of risk most parents routinely and unquestioningly accept for the benefits of childhood immunizations. A bike, a good transit system, and a complete, compact community are the best possible immunizations against boredom, dependence and obesity, with infinitesimal risk and real health and social benefits.

Risks of safety

Dangers are out there, but keeping our kids at home or in our cars at all times isn't the answer. If we are truly committed to putting safety first, we will instil in our children those healthy habits that will serve them their whole lives, we will cultivate in them a sense of community and an enjoyment of strong neighbourhoods that will shape their life experiences. Kids who grow up walking in their hometowns and kids who navigate city transit systems will grow up to be adults who value vibrant, well-planned communities and insist on smart city planning.

By going carless today, we're thinking about tomorrow: reducing our own impact -- at least for a year -- and empowering the next generation to be responsible stewards and good citizens.

Plus, with odds like these, every time we do relax and let our 10-year-olds play in the yard, let our 11-year-olds bike to drama, and send our 12-year-olds to their friends' houses on the city bus, we grant children independence, giving them back something that should be their birthright: the knowledge that their world is (mostly) a pretty good place, full of people who are (mostly) decent. Even better, we're proving to them that they themselves are competent and trustworthy -- that they have personal power.

All that, for trading our car in for cell phones!

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Alan Durning is the founder and executive director of Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Environment Watch), a non-profit think tank whose mission is to bring about sustainability -- a healthy, lasting prosperity grounded in place.

6 Comments:

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  • anarcho

    5 years ago

    Comments on "Stranger Danger!"

    How many kids die or are injured in car accidents compared to kids killed or injured by perverts? I don't know but I bet it is something more than 100 to one. In the US some 45,000 people of all ages are killed by cars and people don't seem to care. Driving a car is probably the single most dangerous thing you can do in your daily life. Walk, bike, bus or train, , whenever it makes sense to do so, you will live longer. I say this as someone who never owned a car till age 47...

  • Lavida

    5 years ago

    Stranger danger

    If you really cared about kids' health you wouldn't be giving them cell phones. Kids' brains are far more succeptable to the effects of the micro waves being absorbed from the phones. I'm glad you can afford the cell phones for the kids. Can you afford the cancer treatments that may be necessary in the future because of your ignorance and negligence.

  • Vanessa Richmond

    5 years ago

    Bring childhood freedom back

    When I hear about the new levels of surveillance children are subject to, and about the disapproval friends of mine who are parents feel when they don't watch their children in now-expected ways, it makes me feel sad and nostalgic. I remember just 25 years ago, my mom would open the door in the morning and give us a time to be home at night. We knew the boundaries, but could ride our bikes around all day and play in the park. Those are some of the best memories of my childhood. If real threats haven't increased, only perception of them, I really hope we find a way to let current and future generations of children experience that kind of joyous freedom too.

  • Cycling Commuter

    5 years ago

    Externalized costs of motorized transportation.

    Motorized transportation doesn't pay anywhere near its true costs. The real costs of motorized transportation are often picked-up by taxpayers and others. If the true costs were assigned to automobile/bus users, pay-as-you-drive/per-km insurance were offered, and part-time cab-licenses were issued, we'd see a lot more ad-hoc/cellphone-dispatched carpooling (see http://thetyee.ca/Life/2007/01/02/CarlessParenting/#comment-98888 ), far fewer unsafe drivers behind the wheel, and more people living closer to their jobs/schools.

    About ten years ago, a friend was severely injured when he was hit by a school bus that ran a stop sign. The bus driver admitted to the attending police officer that she had passed out behind the wheel due to prescription drugs she was taking. Despite this clear admission of responsibility, ICBC insurance offered the victim only $10,000 to settle his claim. We tried to convince the victim to fight ICBC in court for a better settlement. But he was unable to work because of the injury, desperately needed some cash, and was optimistic that his health problems would clear up within a few months. He settled for $10,000.

    Things didn't get better. The victim was unable to return to his job as an accountant because severe back pain caused by being run over by the bus prevented him from concentrating. Painkillers made it even harder to concentrate. The victim wound up selling everything he owned, living on welfare and taking more and more painkillers until he was basically an addicted zombie. All the drugs caused a slight reduction in pain, but the pain never went away.

    After about 5 years living on welfare, the victim found an extremely competent orthopedic surgeon who was able to get an MRI scan done, precisely diagnosed the source of pain and suggested a surgical solution. After several more years on a waiting list, the surgery was done. The victim was much improved to the point he was able to get off welfare and hold down a job again.

    Taxpayers covered the cost of 7 years of welfare and a large surgical bill that should have been paid by auto insurance and higher premiums charged to lousy drivers. The victim suffered through 7 years of agony and lost 7 years of earnings which should have been billed to auto insurance. The public purse lost 7 years of taxes from the victim, which should have been billed to auto insurance.

    This type of offloading of motorized transportation costs onto taxpayers and victims is a lot more common than some people think. One of my brothers injured his back on his job. He was able to very quickly get an MRI scan and other medical diagnostic procedures done through the Workers Compensation Board (WCB). After the WCB's orthopedic surgeon examined the scans, he concluded the back pain was caused by a recent disturbance to an old neck injury, which he said occurred about 20 years previously. It's amazing how accurate a diagnosis can be when a competent doctor is given immediate access to modern diagnostic tools. My brother had suffered what seemed to be a minor neck injury exactly 20 years before when his car was struck from behind and damaged so badly that it was completely written off. At that time, ICBC paid for the written-off car but they refused to pay a penny for the neck injury because they considered it to be "trivial."

    Despite all this, the NDP wanted to take-away motor vehicle collision victims' ability to sue. The NDP wanted to force victims to always accept any crumbs offered by the ICBC monopoly.

  • Cycling Commuter

    5 years ago

    Cellphone Risk/Benefit Analysis.

    Quote:
    Lavida wrote:
    If you really cared about kids' health you wouldn't be giving them cell phones.

    Marine industry workers who have been exposed to extremely powerful marine radio transmitters for 50 years or more have brain cancer rates that are identical to people who have not been similarly exposed. It's true that children are often up to four times more sensitive to carcinogens than adults. But four times zero risk = zero risk.

    Every time a 100% natural lightning bolt from the sky strikes the ground, the massive surge of electricity emits all kinds of powerful electromagnetic waves. The earth is constantly bombarded by electromagnetic waves from space. The static you hear in-between radio stations is largely made up of natural radio transmissions that are spread across the radio spectrum. To help override background noise and improve security, modern CDMA cellphones use a technique that spreads radio transmissions across the spectrum instead of concentrating them in a single frequency.

    Radio communication devices have been around for over 100 years. Overall longevity and health in countries where radio devices are used a lot (Japan for example) tends to be the highest in the world. Countries where relatively few people use radio devices (Zimbabwe, Bangladesh) have among the worst health/longevity in the world.

    When properly used, the overall massive positive health effects of using cellphones as ad-hoc part-time-cab/carpooling dispatch devices far outweigh any miniscule increase in exposure to radio waves. Auto collisions are the #1 killer of young people. Pneumonia is a leading killer of elderly people and much of that smog is caused by motor vehicles. Diesel buses are among the worst emitters because they produce microparticulates that permanently lodge in the lungs. Many people who were lost and/or injured in the wilderness or at sea have been saved by cellphone calls. Same goes for home-invasion victims. I once used my cellphone to call-in a small forest fire that was just getting started in a couple of trees. If I had waited to reach a phone booth at the next town, the fire would have been raging out of control, perhaps costing the lives of firefighters or nearby residents. Smoke from a large fire would have adversely affected the health of a large number of people.

    All the same, it's a good idea to reduce radio wave exposure as much as possible. For example, I've mounted a quick-release car dashboard type cellphone holder on my bike's handlebars. The cellphone transmits through an external antenna which is mounted on top of the bike's visibility flag. This reduces exposure while decreasing transmission power requirements, which reduces exposure even further. I use a hands-free cordless headphone instead of placing the cellphone against my ear. The cordless headphone has a tiny transmitter, but it is super low-powered since it only has to transmit a short distance. As more people use cellphones, the size of each cell gets smaller, which means transmission power requirements get lower.

    As far as microwaves go, I'm much more concerned about microwave ovens. Microwave ovens with leaky door seals can release a fair amount of power. Also, microwaves may cause chemical changes in foods that don't occur in regular ovens. I prefer a combo convection/infrared oven over a microwave oven.

  • seth

    5 years ago

    stranger beatings

    What about all the beatings children receive from roving teenage thugs - several resulting in death. Chuck Cadman's son comes to mind.

    These stats need to be worked into stranger abductions for this argument to be credible to scared soccer moms.

    These same ladies massively voted for George Bush because he scared them with the idea of terrorists on each street corner.

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