It's unfortunately very American. Build the entire environment for cars, with very little if any thought for pedestrians, and then put the parents in prison for letting their kids walk a few blocks home, while the driver of the enormous SUV that kills a child has no charges brought against them. We've entirely lost the plot here.

> the driver of the enormous SUV that kills a child has no charges brought against them

I feel this is exaggerated to the point of being outright misinformation. Drivers are by default liable even in cases like jaywalking.

Unfortunately it's not an exaggeration, here's the article. https://thencbeat.com/legend-jenkins-parents-charged/

No, I read the article before I posted. The driver was not charged. There are plenty of articles that mention it, but here is from one of the top links on Google:

"The driver was not charged in the case, but both of Legend’s parents, Sameule and Jessica Jenkins, were charged with felony involuntary manslaughter and child neglect."

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/nc-lawmaker-bring-attentio...

I see a few phenomena here:

1) The US was rebuilt after WW2 to be highly car-centric, with disastrous results for pedestrian safety. It is actually more dangerous for children to move in public because of this automobile centricity in >95% of US spaces, which drives cultural shifts

2) US media is highly sensationalist; Fox News is popular and generally serves to make viewers frightened of the world

3) The US has 340M people to Ireland’s 5.6M people, so from a base rate, we’d expect ~60x more lurid headlines to come out of the US