Whither safety, whither progress

My parents gave me a grocery bag full of photographic negatives last April. They had them jumbled in their closet, stored away in the odd chance that someone, someday might want to make a print. No one ever did, of course. Family photograph negatives usually are left to rot.

I’ve been scanning them. It’s a labor of love, a glimpse back at my childhood. Most of the photos I don’t remember. Many of them are surprising, and some of them reveal a time and place that no longer exists.

Here I am, around six months old, going for my first motorcycle ride. The driver is a friend of my parents. The year is about 1968. Do you think a parent would allow this today?

Here’s my dad and me. I’m no more than three years-old. We’ve just returned from the post office, where we picked up the mail. I’m sitting on a makeshift bench/cushion, and my feet are resting on a wooden bar bolted to the bicycle’s frame. Do you think a parent would take a child for a ride like this today (even if legal)?

Here I am about seven years old, riding one of the many banana-seat bicycles I had (some were stolen, some I ruined). What parent would allow a child to ride sans helmet today? 

I grew up in a time when safety standards and parental concerns were rapidly evolving. The Chowchilla, California bus kidnapping happened about the time I was riding in the last photo. It freaked out the nation. My normally permissive parents started keeping us closer to home. Video games made their debut, and soon zombie-eyed kids were playing non-stop Pong at home. Helmet awareness crept into the national consciousness, and by the 1980s children under age five had to have helmets on a bicycle. Now, California’s children up to age eighteen can’t use bicycles, scooters, skateboards, or inline skates without a helmet. 

Our memories sometimes have a way of making the past seem rosier than it was. Still, I can’t help but notice that childhood cycling seems rare today. I see few kids riding to school, including Beverly Hill High School, which I pass frequently on my way to work. I see few kids in general on bicycles, with the exception of the teen-aged “hipsters,” who seem to ride in packs looking for urban infrastructure against which to try stunts.

It seems likely that the steady rise in the number of cars has crowded out child cyclists. Parents these days are probably justified in keeping their kids off the streets. Helmet laws might have helped with some injuries, but they also might have helped some parents see cycling as dangerous. Perception has much to do with it: back in the 1970s, my mother didn’t want my brother and me on skateboards because they were “too dangerous” (I think she heard someone fell and broke an arm — we skated anyway); today, she might not want us riding bicycles for similar reasons.

What do you think? Have we lost something since the 1960s? Has the rise in safety-mindedness, and the laws that accompanied it, made our children worse off than they were before? Where do we go from here?