I live in Montgomery County. It has a lot of sidewalks and a lot of busy streets. A child ten or up with common sense could handle walking through most of the County. I wouldn’t want the young kids out, though.
Then again, my philosophy of parenting is “if you let your kid going walking alone outside, you have a 1 in a 100,000 chance that he or she will be abducted by some freak. If you keep your child locked inside all the time, you have about a 90 percent chance he or she will grow up to be a fat dull person. Go with the odds.”
Depends on where you’re at, I guess. I work down in the seedy part of Rockville (near the Metro) where there are few sidewalks and many shady looking characters that I wouldn’t want my kid to go anywhere near.