I absolutely agree with this move, but I'll play devil's advocate for a moment on this
>Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the wheel of a car in high school, he said.
Back in the days before all this modern child cocooning began, kids were free to roam and do pretty much whatever they wanted. But car drivers of the time routinely drove around without safety belts in what were essentially death traps. After safety belts and very basic safety equipment were introduced, it still took decades for people who grew up with the freer childhoods to really cotton on to them.
When I grew up I could roam freely (well, mostly, and I didn't always make as good use of it as I could, often preferring books to soccer) and I still have absolutely no problem with the concept of the safety belt. I know my safety is my responsibility, and if I have a device that can (and arguably already did) save my life - IMO only idiot won't use such a device. So I don't see any connection between rejecting belts and having freerange childhood.
Well, the article is positing the opposite effect is true, that cocooned children don't grow up with an appropriate respect for things that will hurt you, like driving your car safely. My devil's advocate argument is that the opposite is demonstrably true, that children who weren't cocooned did in fact grow up to not appreciate things that would hurt them. A 1950s car, for example, was basically a passenger mulching machine, yet people who grew up uncocooned (as was common at the time) drove them with quite a bit of abandon, flying all over the inside of the passenger area without even basic safety harnesses.
I don't remember the statistic off the top of my head, but Ralph Nader brought to light one particularly brutal group of years where a large number of passengers were decapitated on the glove box door during accidents that were occurring at speeds under 35 mph.
>Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the wheel of a car in high school, he said.
Back in the days before all this modern child cocooning began, kids were free to roam and do pretty much whatever they wanted. But car drivers of the time routinely drove around without safety belts in what were essentially death traps. After safety belts and very basic safety equipment were introduced, it still took decades for people who grew up with the freer childhoods to really cotton on to them.