As a city person, I don’t understand how graffiti-ed streets
and homeless people and traffic and crowds could freak anyone out. I can walk
down nearly any city street without fear, but if you want me to freak right out
ask me to walk down a country road alone at nighttime.
Turns
out that at least for kids, rural areas are more
dangerous than cities. Accoridng to the National Safe Kids Campaign,
kids are more at risk of serious or fatal accidents on the farm or in
rural areas than they
are in urban or suburban areas. And most injuries to farm kids happen
when they
are not actively working at farm chores.
Machinery, motor vehicles and drowning account for more than
half of all farm-related child fatalities. Makes sense, since kids on farms
have access to heavy farm machinery, tractors and off road vehicles, and often
there are ponds or irrigation ditches on the farm. And that leave aside farm
animals (I told you people chickens were dangerous) and chemicals like
fertilizers and pesticides.
Nearly half of all fatal motor vehicle accidents happen in
rural areas.
Yikes. I mean, I know it’s in current moral vogue among my
fellow liberals to worship the simple, organic back to the land lifestyle one
fantasizes about when thinking about farming, but in fact, the reality doesn’t
bear that out. And while conventional wisdom says country life is safe and
clean while city life is dangerous and dirty, it’s
interesting to find out that it’s actually the reverse.
