At what age would you, or did you, let your child cross a busy street alone?

When they go to school on their own.
6.

When he went off to kindergarten, my son insisted on going alone. There were crossing guards at the busy street. This was in a more civil and innocent time. No one would allow that today.

@Sunny2 And crossing gurards would have eliminated one worry.

I began to cross streets alone when I was 9. Now, I grew up in the country (no neighbours, yay!) so street I first crossed alone was an unmanned one, no stop signs, with cars whizzing by at 45–50 mph.

If I had grown up more in town, I would have been able to cross at an earlier age, no problem. Crossing guards make it easy.

@janbb Yes, but as I said, we didn’t worry about worse things in the 60’s. It was a different time.

I had free reign of about a three block radius when I was seven. This was in a NYC suburb, in the early 90s.

My daughter was raised on rural, country/mountain properties and never had to worry about crossing busy roads. Infact, I used to say that country kids are not trained to look for cars because they rarely encounter them. haha
We always lived on private roads with virtually no traffic, one or two down the hill neighbors at most.
However….when she was about 9 I allowed her to ride her bike the one mile down our gravel road and cross another rural, small road, to go to her friends house about 1.5 miles away.

Once, her little friend and her were riding their bikes down our road and a UPS guy ran them off the road and her friend fell over and sprained her arm. I was hopping mad and called the district office and that asshole driver never came back. lol
The UPS guys were the worst, hauling ass on our little road where kids and horses were often out playing and being ridden.

I can’t recall their precise age, but I don’t think age has anything to do with it anyway.
As a parent, you know when your child is mature enough & educated in road safety to a degree where they can be trusted.

I grew up on a 80 acre farm. My parents “did hay” every summer. When I was five and up I was running around fields with machines that could chew me up and bail me without anyone noticing. I would run around delivering beers to the people driving the tractors.

Crossing a street wasn’t really a concern. I am fairly good about observing my surroundings.

I walked the 6 blocks to and from school when I was seven. But it was during the Eisenhower era in extremely safe suburb where everyone knew everyone. I could have knocked on 20 doors of parents of kids I knew.

Those days are probably gone forever.

When my kids were growing up, in Phila., we behaved differently. Even I, as an adult, walked around my neighborhood very mindfully.

I was allowed to walk to the store when I was six. It was just a couple blocks and there was not a major intersection, but I did cross the entrance to a parking lot. This was in a NY suburb. I think my mommprobably let me do it a little too young in retrosepct. The main road was extremely busy and unsafe for very young children.

We moved to a MD suburb when I was nine and I was allowed to walk all over our community, and my sister did also, she was just 7. I can’t remember if I crossed the major road or not alone though. For sure I did by age 11. That road was still less busy than the one in NY.

In the city, between 9 and 11 depending on how responsible they are.

It depended on the street. In order to get to the 7-Eleven, there is a busy road and people fly around the curve and completely ignore the stop sign, so I think my son had to be 9 or even 10 to cross that one. A year or two earlier a 10-year-old had been struck and killed further up the same road, so I wasn’t the only parent who was extra-cautious about that one.

There are streets in my neighborhood I wouldn’t even cross as an adult. We have no sidewalks and no shoulders on the sides of most of the roads. I am working to change that, but until then, my daughter won’t be crossing any streets in my area. Neither will I.

I was allowed free reign at age 7. I walked to school, the library and the Y. But that was in a town that had a good sidewalk system.

the child needs to be
1) tall enough where they can be easily visible above the hood of a parked car at the side of the road, so if they are waiting to cross they don’t just appear out of nowhere to the driver. this height will also help them see traffic in both directions
2) mature enough to handle the responsibility. this is much harder to gauge. you basically need to have the child help YOU across the street to see if they have a good sense of what is safe and what is not. this will take months of work on your part.

I tried to do it naked, when I was 2, but that didn’t go across well with my mom.

I think sometime between 8 and 11, depending on who, where, when, what kind of cars and drivers—in some places, like the “top 10 cities with the worst drivers,” I’d wait until they were a bit older, even 11. I agree with @keobooks If there are no sidewalks or shoulders, everybody should avoid those streets anyway.

If the kid has any degree of ADHD or impulsivity, I’d be leery about letting them cross without supervision for quite some time.

My daughter crossed streets in our neighborhood just fine when she was 10, but when we lived on a very busy street the year before, I wasn’t too crazy about letting her past the driveway.

@drhat77 – Why on earth should a kid cross a street between parked cars?

Sorry, but if my daddy ever drilled ANYTHING into my head, it was always cross at the crosswalk! jaywalking was right out. Diving out into New York City traffic in middle of the is a good way to commit suicide.

@drhat77 I really like your number one, a child got hit on my street when I was young because she darted into the street through parked cars and she would have been impossible to see coming. She broke her leg only and wound up ok, but the poor driver was traumatized. The child’s mother was very empathetic towards the driver and tried to assure her she knew her child had made it impossible for the driver to avoid the accident.

Here’s the thing, now in the land of mega big SUV’s there is almost always “cars” bigger and taller than most children. I drive our pick-up truck sometimes and there are so many blind spots it is ridiculous.

A child needs to demonstrate they know not to run into a street, that a driver must make eye contact with them to feel sure they were seen (adults need to do this too, I swear I think some people were never taught this) and not to walk behind cars. Just the other day I was waiting at a stop to turn right into a road and a guy walked behind my car to be nice so I could merge onto the road. But, I was in a clutch car and I roll back when I start (I was on a hill) and if I didn’t know he was back there I would have rolled right nto him.

Good points all.
I have to take a good look at a crosswalk bit don’t cars park up until them? So a small child could be hidden by a car even when standing in the entry of a crosswalk?

Cars are not allowed to be parked at corners, so if your child is only crossing at intersections with crosswalks they should be easily visible.

I grew up in a tony suburb of NYC, a very nice little village and had an idyllic childhood. I started walking to school with my friend from the same building, I was in first grade and she was in second. I think it was around that time that I learned how to cross.

Then around second grade, I used to walk to my friend’s house alone and we’d be all over, walking, watching, playing and sometimes getting into trouble. We’d be on busy avenues that today, a kid would probably not be allowed on at the ages we were. It was a different time (early 70’s).

That said, I would not let my daughter cross the same streets now, if I lived there. I think when she’s about 9 I would.