I am not so certain they were actually safer.
The perception of safety was much greater.
Kids are actually much safer today, because of better traffic controls, safer cars, car seats for kids, many other safety devices built into power tools, etc.
Today we are inundated by viral, sensationalist media, which program us to think we are not safe.
DING! DING! DING! We have a WINNER!
Our ENEMEDIA has made every story into a life or death matter, like children crossing the street to actual kidnappings. It isn’t that they don’t care they are scaring America...that is what they are trying to accomplish!
Sensationalism sells!
This is largely caused my media consolidation. What was once a local story is endlessly repeated nationwide. Depending upon where you live, a given neighborhood may or may not be 'safer' than it was when you were young. Sadly, it is not if it is more mixed race or has any significant concentrations of muslims around.
I had issues regarding my girls when they were younger because I would just as soon have let them be mostly 'free range' once they seemed to be responsible enough for it, but the wife was definitely against that. I walked a bit more than a mile to school from kindergarden on, and we did live in a fairly mixed-race area. To us, we were all just kids, and didn't care about such things, but we also didn't have people trying to make blacks hate whites 24/7/365. By the time we got to where we really noticed 'race', we'd all been living and playing together for years, so it really wasn't much of an issue, thank God.
The Safety First mentality is poison.