juan

He was doing 25 mph. How much slower should he be going? walking pace?

Not having kids I don't know how much sense a typical 10 year old has.
If its not enough to be near a road safely then they should be supervised in my simple book

Tiggs

just because a 10 year old is old eneough to be out on his own doesnt mean he wont do something stupid....yet it still isnt grounds for constant supervision.

my daughter is just turned 8....she goes to the post box for me everyday about 7 mins walk away. she is old enough to not need supervising....however, she is only 8 and its not 100% that she wouldnt step in the road for some stupid reason. she knows she shouldnt and is educated but she's only young and **** happens.

you cant wrap kids up till they are adults...they have to find their own way...even if that involves risks...thats life, you lot live in a weird world!

Drunken Bungle Whore

A clear case of driving without ESP I'd say!

Of course you should "be aware" of children (and adults - especially drunken ones late at night ) but FFS you can't drive everywhere at 10 mph "just in case"

Everyone seems desperate to blame someone or something these days - are there ever any genuine accidents anymore?

My biggest gripe with other drivers is the speed they drive around supermarket carparks (and car parks in general for really) - they really are dnagerous places with adults and kids likely to appear at any second from behind parked vehicles. I can't believe there aren't 1000's killed and injured every year.


(oh - and by teh way 9 people are killed EVERY SINGLE DAY on our roads - 1/3 of them driving in connection with their job) Maybe we should all stay home....

juan

let me rephrase

Not having kids I don't know how much sense a typical 10 year old has nowadays.
If its not enough to be near a road safely then they should be supervised, unless the parent is willing to accept what may happen and is happy with that.

I know I used to walk the best part of a mile along roads (1 quite major) when I was 6 to go to school and back again, along with other kids. Never got run over and never ran out into the road without looking though I did get some serious grief for walking down the gutter instead of on the pavement!

ajm

That is fair enough if you have taken what you believe to be every reasonable precaution and let her out in the knowledge that an accident might still happen. However, in doing so you must indemnify, against any responsibility, drivers who may hit your daughter through no fault of their own.

Many parents would not be willing to do that.

tiggers

It's very simple

Some kids are smart, some kids are dumb.

Unfortunatley some of the dumb kids will get run over whereas the rest of them will probably buy an X5 with bull bars when they're older

tiggers.

vindaloo

Regardless of intelligence, kids do apparently crazy things without the slightest sign or warning. Kids have to be educated that cars and roads will be dangerous unless you deal with them properly. Equally, car owners have to behave responsibly and not speed about like bullets everywhere.

At the end of the day though, some kids don't seem to have any sense of risk. Equally, some parents don't seem to give a f*ck until it's too late.

J.

OllyK

Err nope

Diablo

When I was 10 I had the sense to know that being hit by a car/bike/bus/truck was going to cause a lot of damage.

Why? Because it had been instilled in me from a young age by parents who accepted the responsibility of being parents. As a result, I was never run over despite playing on public streets.

I'm sick to death of comments like "kids just don't know" being used as excuses for poor parenting.

If you can't accept 100% responsibility for your kids, all of the time, you shouldn't have them.

D

Markus

Not the most pleasant thing to witness, at least it was not a fatality.

I do accept the "Kids do dumb things" comments, they do, as we all do, hell, I've done some seriously stupid things that kids have said they'd never do, so we all do it.

Maybe a Q for those with kids, but is road safety still taught in schools as it was in "my day" eg; Tufty the Squiggle (still makes me pish myself when I see it today) and the Green Cross Code man (ok so Dave Prowse is probably not doing it these days, and if he was he'd be using a light sabre, which might be a good way of instilling the virtues of road safety).

I think the lack of parental control also has a lot to do with things, kids having kids, and thus not really caring about bringing up the kids as they are still young and don't want or can't handle the responsibility, more interested in going down the pub/club than teaching kiddy right from wrong.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Yep me to! I managed to survive to the ripe old age of 34 without being hit by a car, like Diablo it was instilled into me from a very early age that roads were for fast moving metal things on wheels and pavements for for soft slow moving squishy bipeds. I use to play out on the street from about 4 upwards when I grew up in Manchester and never came close to getting squished.

It is 100% the parents responsibility to train their kids in right and wrong.

dba

The driver could still be in trouble,even at 25mph if that speed is deemed to have been dangerous down the road he was travelling.Remember the bloke who was sent down for doing 29mph after he hit someone.

Spoon

Ban the child from McDonalds for 12 months and fine him/her a percentage of his/her pocket money.

Tiggs

diabalo and wurzel....what crap!

30 years ago ppl still got knocked over! kids still did daft things!

how many advets do you see on TV nowadays to stay of building sites? none...is that because 30 years ago kids were idiots who couldnt say no to a pile of sand?

and your comments are so contradictory, you say you were on the street from the age of 4....what were your parents doing? or were you a very clever 4 year old that had a full comprehension of road saftey????

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Tiggs have you always been a bolshy obstinate stroppy argumentative idiot or is it something that developed with age?

Anyway who are you to tell me what is crap or not ???Are both me and Diablo alive ? have either me or Diablo been hit by cars?

My parents did not need to supervise me because they had already warned me about the danger of cars and roads, Maybe I was a quick learner I don't know but I have always been wary of the dangers on roads, like I said roads are for cars not people! if people want to cross roads they use zebra crossings.

Anyway you think what you like M8 that is your choice.

Spoon

Lets not forget there are a lot of dim children out there from dim parents.

No amount of educating will replenish bad genes.

Tiggs

wurzel...you should have been learning to read at 4 not play in the street...it may help!

my point is that you were told how to behave on the road......as are kids today. its no different, this "in my day" stuff is tosh.

in your day kids...even those taught how to behave...did stupid things without thinking, as some do today.

in your day there were crap parebts as there are today....go back far enough and parents sent their kids up chimmneys so there goes the "getting worse with time" theory!

if you take a load of kids FROM ANY ERA and educate them on the road dangers some will still dive in front of cars without thinking. the fact you are alive doesn't have anything to do with it!

so in your post you say you were left to play in the street...good, i assume your folks felt it safe enough....as do i with my kids today BUT there will be some parents out there with good kids who are taught well who do something silly and luck/time/chance all go against them. you must have done something silly between the age of 4 and 34? your either alive because your lucky that silly thing never had a bad ending or your alive because you never did a silly thing in your life.......which is rare for a kid except the kid with curly haid that dealt antiques and had a high IQ- he was on Wogan years ago, bet he never ran in the road.

Spoon

Yes but he is now a she!!

carl

What a load of sanctimoneous crap is being spouted here. At the age of 11, when I was "old enough to know that a car can hurt you" I ran into the road in front of one. I thought I could make it across the road in time, but I couldn't. It was a simple misjudgement, but fortunately the driver braked and avoided me.

And then at the age of 19, having just come out of an insurance brokers with a particularly bad car insurance quote, I managed to walk across the road and catch the back of a moving lorry with my face
About a dozen stitches sorted it out (jaw not broken, fortunately) and you can hardly see the scar now. Again, a simple misjudgement.

ISTM that everything's somebody's "fault" now. Can't we accept that misjudgements and being in the wrong place at the wrong time are facts of life? I bet if anyone on here misjudged an overtaking manouevre and caused a crash, they wouldn't be saying "Well, I should have been supervised"

Spoon

Seems like there's no hope for you Carl.

Walking into a moving lorry at 19, well, what can you say really?

ajm

Accepted. Its just a shame that both examples you have cited were clearly YOUR fault!

Spoon

Carl- Was the bad insurance quote for insuring yourself for walking?

carl

Obviously. I had to declare the 11yo incident and they said I was too much of a liability. Clearly I was lucky I didn't take out the policy, as the lorry incident would have knackered my NCB. Still, I showed my dissatisfaction by covering their quote slip in blood.

So, are you telling me that you've never nearly or actually been run over as a pedestrian? I even made the classic mistake a while back of talking on a mobile phone whilst attempting to cross the A4 Talgarth Road. Nearly got run over by a motorbike!

carl

The financial world was obviously concerned about my wellbeing -- the stock markets responded by crashing (it was Black Wednesday)

Spoon

Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying.
How many more incidents have you had?? What you call a classic mistake, I'd call an act of a dimlow.

You are a liability Carl, stay in under a duvet for everyones safety.

Sith

These Scoobynet matches are almost as good as Jerry Springer.

-grabs popcorn, sits back-

Spoon

Sith- Don't bother, Carl has just walked into his garden pond whilst reading a copy of OK magazine so he won't be around for a bit.

carl

And we haven't even got onto my driving skills yet

Spoon -- you think you're so smart, but I don't even have a garden pond

PS: Even Ukyo Katayama got run over

Spoon

Even worse then, so what were you doing in somebody elses garden!!

carl

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't reading OK magazine