30 meters

30 meters.

That's how far - at the max - I was from a corner with a crosswalk when I watched a mother with her three boys, all under ten, jaywalk on a busy downtown street.

Oh, she made them all hold hands, and she was careful to look for a fairly big break in the heavy traffic, but what are the odds, do you think, of the boys doing that when they're by themselves? Because since Mom did it, you know they think it's OK. So they're going to do it, too, and not just on nice, slow residental streets. And they're going to get squished, and Mom is going to blame the driver, not her child who learned from her that it was OK to take unsafe shortcuts on busy streets.

Natural selection at work, I guess.