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Parents are charged after their son, 7, is struck dead by a driver
(www.nbcnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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At seven I went to school and back home on foot and alone, about a mile, everyday. I did once have a close call with a car that didn't stop for a crosswalk.
Are parents supposed to accompany their kids at all time until they are 18?
According to 'murica, until 16. Then they can drive their own car.
Seriously though?
No, they're joking. There's no federal law governing it afaik- only state laws that vary wildly. Child development experts mostly agree that under 8yo is too young to be unaccompanied
Edit: NC doesn't have a minimum, and the 7yo was with a 10yo, so it sounds like they have pretty much no case
The article says they were with an adult who was from the grocery store ... So they were with an adult... Just not the parents... Unless I'm reading it wrong... I don't even see anyone else mentioning this
They left their mom at home, and were walking two blocks up the street to meet up with their dad, who was grocery shopping. The dad was on the phone with the older kid at the time, keeping tabs on them while letting them gain confidence going on their own.
As a parent who struggles not to helicopter my kids, none of this sounds out of line to me. The driver who apparently couldn't react to a kid stepping out unexpectedly, in what sounds like a residential area? I want to know why he's got a license.
We have many places where phone distracted drivers have made it too dangerous for any aged person to walk or ride a bike.
But it’s hyperbole. Kids in cities can get around alone just fine. And my 7 y/o goes to friends houses across a street and the through backyards. We have no sidewalks and fast cars though. So he is extra careful crossing. To the point that he’s basically a crossing guard when we walk together.
It sucks though because there’s nowhere to safely learn to ride a bike that isn’t driving distance from our house.
It it really hyperbole though? Kids in the city are generally murdered by cars more than anything else. And if you have to cut through backyards to avoid death, that's not really an optimal situation there. Personally I don't care about trespassing at all, but people could literally shoot kids for this in shithole USA.
https://mccunewright.com/blog/2017/03/traffic-collisions-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-in-los-angeles/
No but North Carolina cops will arrest a black parent to avoid having to arrest a white driver.
Yeah when I was seven my sister and I would travel laying in the backseat of the car, no seatbelts, with four adults in a car legally limited to five occupants, and they would smoke inside (rolled down the windows at least). I'm alive, and so is my sister. That doesn't mean it was alright and we should keep on doing it.
Parents are supposed to teach their kids to navigate the world and be sure they've learned before letting them loose into traffic, which these people didn't do. Also unloading the responsibility on the older sibling(s) is something that have to stop, a ten years old shouldn't have to carry that burden, imagine the guilt and trauma of that poor child.
Yeah sure, blame the victims of horrible infrastructure. I walked myself to kindergarden, when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when I was 7, I would walk home from school.
There wasn't some busy four-lane-road on my way in my rural town. Four fucking lanes? What the hell?
Living in a city, I wasn't allowed to cross roads by myself when I was seven (some thirty years ago) much less four lane ones. The horrible American infrastructure make it even worse for the parents to let their kids go alone. Was the mother not aware of that road being there?
Better question: Was the old fart not aware there were children under his murder vehicle?
He's cooperating with the cops apparently, but it sounds like it was a bystander who was checking on the other kid until their parents could get there.
Experts pretty much all agree that kids need some level of autonomy and freedom to grow up healthy. The exact level is under constant debate, and at what age things are appropriate is under constant debate. With freedom and autonomy though will come accidents. It's an unavoidable consequence. There's no way to be absolutely certain that a particular kid won't make a terrible lapse in judgement, no matter how much you've drilled something into them. Hell, even adults make those kinds of mistakes all the time.
Put another way, I could keep my kids very safe by keeping them in the house, tethered to an iPad all the time, unable to leave my earshot, like so many parents seem to do now. They'd be super safe. And they'd grow into the kind of inept, stunted kids that people are constantly complaining about.
According to the cops. jfc.
Yeah 2 miles here. It's still the rule, school bus service available if you are more than 2 miles away from school OR would have to cross a dangerous road.
And no, obviously we are supposed to be precognitive and able to tell if something will happen.
That said - I would let my kids walk to the shop themselves only if there was no big road to cross. Drivers here will run kids right over. Everyone knows someone with a family member killed by a car.