I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the GP. I read “their current state” as referring to the roads, not to the kids. For example: lack of sidewalks, roads with high speed limits, distracted drivers on phones, lack of other children walking.

++ A lot of people in this thread either live in wonderfully walkable places or have simply never actually tried. Y'all, Google Maps giving you walking directions is not the same thing as walkable lol.

The local high school where I grew up was not exactly walkable. There were multiple uncontrolled crossings (with speed limits over 30mph) and missing sidewalks all over the place that force you to walk on the shoulder/in the gutter.

That's not particularly relevant to this discussion because walking under the influence is not a major contributor when children are hit or killed by drivers.

Children also have different risk factors, for example many trucks and SUV drivers have poor visibility and cannot see sufficiently short road users that are close to the front of the vehicle, for example when stopped at a stop sign or traffic light.

Worse yet, most cars now are lifted high enough to where the block line-of-sight for pedestrians and cyclists (and even people in reasonably sized sedans and compact cars) from being able to see oncoming traffic from an intersection when they’re parked on a corner.