/ Cory Doctorow / 12:46 am Thu Mar 24, 2011

Kids' sidewalk chalking banned because someone might trip into traffic

A cafe in Nunawading, Australia is being forced to stop toddlers from drawing with chalk on its sidewalk, despite the fact that the kids, the cafe, the townspeople and the mayor all like the drawings. The drawings contravene the town's anti-graffiti laws, and the mayor says he can't grant a permit because someone might trip over a child, fall into traffic and die horribly. As Lenore Skenazy says,
Can we PLEASE stop catastrophizing this way in every situation? If the kids are an accident waiting to happen while they draw on the sidewalk, aren't they an accident waiting to happen while they just stand on the sidewalk, too? After all, someone could bump into them! A car could jump the curb! A dog could chase them into the street! And inside the cafe, a patron could spill boiling tea on them. Every situation can be dangerous if you think about it hard enough. Why use THAT as an excuse to curtail childhood?
Council slaps ban on child's play

(Image: Sidewalk Chalk, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from crschmidt's photostream)

 

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  1. When I read this I pictured gangs of toddlers with chalk and wearing berets stopping foot traffic to scratch out art on the sidewalks. Are these toddlers unaccompanied? Don’t toddlers need permits to do chalk art in this particular town? – oh yeah, and where are the parents or guardians? Oh geez, what a mess!

    1. Now I’m imaging gangs of toddlers running around at 3am tagging up sidewalks…while drinking beers and smoking reefer while listening to underground hip-hop.

      1. Now I’m imaging gangs of toddlers running around at 3am tagging up sidewalks…while drinking beers and smoking reefer while listening to underground hip-hop.

        In South Croydon yes, but not Nunawading.

  2. It seems innocent enough until some kid draws a circle with a star in the middle and BOOM, demon summoning in progress.

    1. “demon summoning in progress.”

      in my relatively limited experience with kids, it seems to me that a significant minority are already demonic. a majority of kids are angelic, of course, but there appear to be a few soulless zombies in the mix too. or perhaps they’re just tired. it’s hard to tell.

      none of them are dangerous though

  3. This was in my local paper yesterday. It’s a pretty laid-back area of Melbourne so I was surprised. Council should be ashamed of themselves and apologise. My boy draws on the footpath all the time, I used to do the same when I was four years old. What’s the problem?

  4. “If the kids are an accident waiting to happen while they draw on the sidewalk, aren’t they an accident waiting to happen while they just stand on the sidewalk, too?”

    Is this writer completely lacking in imagination? Can’t visualize the difference between a kid standing and a kid drawing on the sidewalk (down on knees and elbows). Standing kid would be more likely to appear in my eyeline.

    How crowded is this sidewalk? (My imagination is biased on the crowds I pass through daily, living in central Tokyo. May not be relevant).

    1. Well, my Mom would’ve told me “Paß auf wo do langgehst”. I’m reasonably sure that other people have similar sayings.

  5. Another victory for the litigious amongst us.

    Imagine, some lummox bringing suit

    Lawyer: “My client was simply walking along the sidewalk when he was suddenly tripped by these tiny, gangster-style graffito “artists” scrawling on the public way! He tripped, fell into traffic and several minutes later was grazed by a minicab, leaving him all but disabled.”

    Judge: “It sounds as if your client is lucky it wasn’t raining.”

    Layer: “Why do you say that your Honor?”

    Judge: “Because he might have looked up, gaped at the magic of water falling from the sky and drowned. Case dismissed.”

  7. The only problem is that the news story is from the News Limited website. News Limited in Australia is notorious for distorting the facts to make the story fit their editorial guidelines.
    I’d like to see it reported somewhere else, as I suspect the story linked to is wildly inaccurate.

  8. The person who issued this warning may well have been suffering from hypervigilance. It is a condition that is fairly common and can be a feature of older age.

  9. In German Law we have a concept that may be translated to “General Risk of Living”. This is used for example in the “child ran away from parents hand and caused accident” cases, maybe it would fit this situation, too.

  10. Is it really “graffiti” when you can hose it off in about ten seconds? Man, I loved sidewalk chalk when I was a kid. Next I suppose they’ll force the kids to wear helmets when playing “Duck Duck Goose.”

  12. I was going to comment on this more fully, but then I realized I might hit the keys on my keyboard too hard, break all my fingers, and be completely unable to dial my phone for an ambulance.

  13. if anyone does get killed in all of this, at least the toddlers will be there to draw the chalk outlines

    1. That won’t work, kids won’t stay in the lines worth shit.

      And to Anon #49.

      The ‘nanny state’ are the idiots in the legislation or parliament that pass these laws in the name of protection or whatever. Their source may come by various entities, but it all comes out of the people who are suppose to be the wise keepers of the law.

  14. It would be much safer if everyone just stays in doors; I’ve always thought the risk of bumping into other people on paths is far too great.

    How do the descendants of these people survive long enough to ensure their genetics are passed on?

  15. ambulance chasing lawyers, “where’s there’s blame, there’s a claim” type advertising and “no-win, no-fee” type lawsuits are ALL to blame for people getting all uptight and banning anything they could be sued for…

    sadly the only winners at the moment are the law profession… the rest of society gets stiffed with keeping them in clover…

  17. “Catastrophizing” is the guiding force for authoritarianism in the Western world since 11 Sep 2001.

  22. Totally disingenuous ass-coverage on the part of the mayor. The children’s self expression is being targeted via state graffiti and local vandalism laws, not public safety.

    Also, this is not a dangerous street. There are many traffic speed curbing bumps and there is a Primary School nearby, so drivers will be extra vigilant.

    Also, as peterbruells suggests, if there are children on the pavement step around them! Jeez!

    If the councillors cannot see the difference between “destroy, damage, foul, interfere or deface anything located in or on the municipal place or road”, and children playing harmlessly they probably shouldn’t be in positions of responsibility. Nothing is defaced – it’s just temporarily enhanced until the next rain washes it away.

  23. Can we not embrace survival of the fittest a bit more? If you got killed by tripping over a toddler, you had it coming. Toddler and gene pool win. End of story. Humanity is doomed if we keep trying to put bumpers on all the sharp edges of life.

  24. Might I suggest ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Townspeople in Melbourne From Being a Public Safety Hazard, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.’

  25. This post reminded me of a project, in Brighton UK, where the residents of one road are tracking their electricity usage. What ties in here is the aggregated use is painted on to the road in chalk.

    Check it out here: http://www.tidystreet.org/

  26. A friend of mine name this as “micromanaged tiny authority”. Meaning, the guard that doesn´t let you sit in the grass or the janitor that moves you from the door where you are talking with your friends.

  29. I’m glad my council either hasn’t found the kids on my street, or they actually Officially Don’t Care, because here, in Western Australia, they draw on the street!
    Yes, on the bitumen, in full view of all the cars that come down our …
    well, it’s a dead end road and I’ve not seen any car travel at more than 30km/hr down it, and the kids on my street play on it all the time.

  30. If this was going on in my area, I would personally teach my kids how to spray paint on walls, to protect the public’s *safety*.

    1. “She said the drawings were usually stick figures, scribbles, fish or pirates.”

      Well there’s the problem right there. RIAA has been very straightforward in how they want everyone to deal with pirates.

  32. After all, someone could bump into them! A car could jump the curb! A dog could chase them into the street!… Every situation can be dangerous

    Oh my god they’re right, Kids are walking death-traps! We have to get rid of them all before they destroy themselves and us along with them!

  34. Could someone please link to a video of Irwin Mainway on Consumer Probe? I’m blocked ’cause I’m in Canada, eh?

  35. This article makes me feel better. It proves that the US has not cornered the market on stupidity and ridiculous laws.

  36. Maybe about 10 feet prior, the kids could chalk- sketch out some warning signs about ‘toddlers ahead’?

  37. I have been going through some vintage gag and novelty catalogs. They are from 1979 and older. Nothing explicitly marketed to kids. Nothing specifically marketed to adults. Just tons of goofy crap. Jokes kids would like next to knives and other stuff. Nudie playing cards next to kid-friendly magic tricks.

    I can say with all assuredness that being a 10 year old prior to 1980 was a really wonderful, magical, cheesy and dangerous place. One I am am happy to have been raised in.

    I feel pity for parents who are asserting their “soft power” by forcing kids not to be kids.

    1. I suspect when we talk about “the nanny state” (and honestly I do it too) we are misrepresenting a nexus of attitudes and issues as a single cohesive force.

      It’s a convenient meme, but it seems there are a great many sources of authoritarianism, inappropriate regulation, and unwarranted expenditure towards unreachable goals that we too easily think of as tentacles of a single monster, when really they are the effects of battling forces that have only tangentially overlapping goals.

      I don’t think the Monsanto Corporation and the Catholic Church are in any meaningful sense allies, for instance, although they are both spending millions of dollars in an attempt to take away your individual right to choose. Neither one will see the others’ success as a ‘victory’.

  40. God I hate this lawsuit driven pseudosociety we are creating for ourselves. Every damn possible little danger is a blight to be crushed at any cost. Every little bruise and cut on our precious little golden children is a horror beyond imagining. I agree with Jack, thank god I grew up in freer days.

    That said I think the real reasoning behind this is that the danger issue is a red herring. They just came up with some bullshit excuse to hide their real problem, they didn’t want these kids hanging out in front of the cafe. They didn’t want the screaming, yelling, and running around that comes with them. They wanted to kick them off the sidewalk by their cafe but they didn’t want to look like meanies or simply couldn’t due to it being a public space. So they talked to the town and made up a bogus safety reason that would bypass those issues.

  41. Attention moms: your toddler is not as adorable as you think he or she is, especially when he or she is SITTING on a FOOTPATH. Move your child please, people need to walk on this public thoroughfare without a toddler and its art acting as an obstacle course. While you’re at it, please don’t bring them to any movie rated PG or above(?) and let them talk using their outside voices and not shush them, or let them run around in the restaurant or airplane or in church. Sure, kids will be kids, but that’s why as a parent you either try to control them or you don’t take them someplace where they will be a nuisance. I have a very friendly black lab who will happily say hello to everyone in a 100-ft radius with her wet nose and tongue so I don’t take her to cafes or anywhere else she may annoy people. I love her but I don’t expect the rest of the world to do the same.
    ________________________________________________

    If I were helping my grandmother walk down the sidewalk and we had to stray into the street to avoid stepping on a toddler it might cross my mind to ask the cafe or city council to move the toddlers off of the sidewalk. Why doesn’t the cafe just put paper on the tables and let the kids go at it with crayons?

    Maybe the cafe should allow toddlers to sit in the aisles between their tables and draw on the floor instead of on the public sidewalk in front of the cafe? It’s not like the little darlings would be in anyone’s way, right?

    I seem to remember laying as often as sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house or in the driveway when I used sidewalk chalk. Who would be at fault if an adult did step on a toddler who was sitting or laying on a crowded sidewalk in front of a business?

    This does not seem to be as hysterical a reaction by the city council as the boingboing regulars are making it out to be. Toddlers have places to play but they don’t have ~everyplace~ to play.

    Also, this was hilarious — “if anyone does get killed in all of this, at least the toddlers will be there to draw the chalk outlines” Thanks for the laugh, burritoflats.

    1. The thing is, anonymous, the vast majority of the world’s population likes children and wants to have them around all the time. The child-hating attitudes of a few anglo-german societies don’t represent the human norm. Thank God.

      1. What, you don’t like his grandmother?

        I have a feeling if I was helping my grandmother down the street like that she’d want to spend a minute or two watching and hanging out with kids having fun. But maybe that’s just us.

    2. “Maybe the cafe should allow toddlers to sit in the aisles between their tables and draw on the floor instead of on the public sidewalk in front of the cafe? It’s not like the little darlings would be in anyone’s way, right?”

      anecdotally, my neighbourhood cafe often has “little darlings” running around, playing on the floor, and sometimes snoozing under tables. no one complains. it’s part of the charm of the cafe.
      I’m not a grandparent, but i do sometimes need to walk with a cane. i can’t think of one time when i resented sharing the sidewalk with toddlers. but maybe that’s just because i’m a nice guy….

    3. I used to live in the area but I hadn’t heard of the location in question. Its out of the way on a small street surrounded by houses. Check out street view. Its not a major shopping strip. My guess is there is no significant pedestrian traffic. I was surprised street view had covered the place at all.

      tl;dr: Quiet, out of the way. No trouble to anybody.

  42. When did children stop being human beings and start being pets and obstacles for “real humans” (adults)?

    1. It’s difficult to market to toddlers (whose hippie parents typically don’t let them watch television!) so we took their rights and gave them to the people who would get the most use from them: Corporations!

    2. When did children stop being human beings and start being pets and obstacles for “real humans” (adults)?

      I think it’s been that way for most of known history… I’m waiting for it to cease as well.

  43. Heinlein had it right in Number of the Beast when he referred to’the year they hung the lawyers’.

  44. Again, toddlers have places to play but they don’t have ~everyplace~ to play.

    This isn’t a child-hating attitude but that was an impressive leap. Bravo. I also gave two alternatives — let the kids draw on paper on the cafe’s tabletops or floor. This seems unreasonable to you???? If the cafe won’t allow toddlers to play in ~their~ space instead of a public thoroughfare are they also child haters?

    I’d be irked if toddlers were playing on the freeway or in the street, stopping traffic or causing cars to slow down and swerve out of the way — is this also the child-hating attitude of a few anglo-german societies which don’t represent the human norm? Thank God I live in one of those societies because your kid’s right to play should not interfere with my right to get home and see my own family. Thank God.

    I’m also guessing that most people don’t want children playing or talking during a movie that they paid $10-$12/ticket to see. Fortunately most parents have the good sense to hire a babysitter for a few hours instead of subjecting the other adults in the theater to their kids’ inappropriate behavior*. Thank God! Thank God they don’t insist on having them around all the time. Thanks, God!

    Fact is, a society requires compromise from its citizens. Some are enforced — everyone drives on the same hand side of the road and between the painted lines instead of wherever they want, and others are just unspoken consideration for others — I won’t burp in your presence and you won’t fart in mine, even if both are perfectly legal and entirely natural acts. Thank God. Why should parents not be expected to be considerate of others if they have kids with them? This is not child-hating. I love music but I don’t want to hear yours at 3am. There’s a time and a place for everything.

    Should toddlers be allowed to draw on any sidewalk? How about the sidewalk at the end of your driveway? So what if you can’t back out, kids will be kids, right? Who the hell are you to ask them to move? Should toddlers be allowed to sit at the top of an up escalator? Are you seeing now how it’s reasonable to keep toddlers out of people’s way? Are you seeing that it isn’t hatred to do it? Is it sinking in that this isn’t treating them like animals? Thank God. Are you beginning to understand that we’re talking about toddlers — TODDLERS! — who are fragile and easily damaged? You don’t keep your finest crystal vase sitting on the floor in the middle of your hallway, do you? Oh wait, now I’m comparing a toddler to a vase! Shame on me. Thank God.

    By the way, is there an age limit to this attitude of yours? Would you feel the same way about teens sitting or lying on a sidewalk and you had to walk around them, or is it just the cute toddlers you want around all the time? Do cute teenagers get a pass while the ugly ones are just in the way? Do toddlers get a special pass because a parent can’t be expected to keep them out of people’s (and harm’s, potentially) way? Surprisingly a parent can, if they try and if they give a damn about others. Thank God.

    Thank God,
    A Child-Hating Anglo-German who does not represent the human norm**
    AKA Norm

    *Not inappropriate toddler behavior but definitely inappropriate theater behavior, except for G-rated fare, which is why any thoughtful parent keeps the two separate. Thank God.

    1. Anon #56. Sense of perspective? A small case of gentle-humanity-hassled-by-buffoons is not deserving of such histrionics.

      I don’t understand what the tenfold invocation of your invisible deity is supposed to suggest. Please don’t elucidate.

  45. @ Antonous
    > It seems innocent enough until some kid draws a circle with a star in the middle and BOOM, demon summoning in progress.

    I can’t tell you how often that’s happened to me. Or was that Buffy? Oh well, it’s all the same.

    @ RuthlessRuben
    > I wonder when we’ll be so safe that we can’t leave our houses any more.

    When this is life:

    @ Bill
    > Toddlers are a menace to society.

    Truer words were never typed. This whole reproduction business simply has to stop. It’s killing us.

    @ Sprayah
    > Ban walking, problem solved…

    Isn’t that a Bruce Willis movie (that ripped off a David Brin novel)?

    @ Anon
    > Might I suggest ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Townspeople in Melbourne From Being a Public Safety Hazard, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.’

    Did you have any particular recipes…I mean plans in mind?

    @ jjsaul
    > Local paper’s article with photo of the villians:

    > Whitehorse Leader article

    I wonder if Colbert would do an international “Nailed ‘Em” segment. Sure, it’s not in America, but it’s on America’s planet :-)

    @ BB
    > This article makes me feel better. It proves that the US has not cornered the market on stupidity and ridiculous laws.

    Nope. The Bell Curve is in effect everywhere and always. But if you ever find somewhere where it’s not, please let me know. I can pack quickly.

    > Maybe about 10 feet prior, the kids could chalk- sketch out some warning signs about ‘toddlers ahead’?

    Wouldn’t that violate child labor laws?

    @ Anon
    > When did children stop being human beings and start being pets and obstacles for “real humans” (adults)?

    Children are human beings? Whoa! This changes everything.

    @ Anon

    > I suspect when we talk about “the nanny state” (and honestly I do it too) we are misrepresenting a nexus of attitudes and issues as a single cohesive force.

    The Nanny State of Mind :P

    > I don’t think the Monsanto Corporation and the Catholic Church are in any meaningful sense allies, for instance, although they are both spending millions of dollars in an attempt to take away your individual right to choose. Neither one will see the others’ success as a ‘victory’.

    The Catholic Church supported feudal corporations. The Monsanto Corporation supports corporate feudalism. It’s like that old joke: ‘In democracy it’s your vote the counts; in feudalism, its your count that votes.”

    Aaron

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