I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

  • Xavienth
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    10 months ago

    I mean, driving in two inches of unploughed snow isn’t a big deal where I’m from but that’s - as you mentioned - where everyone has winter driving experience, but also winter tires.

    • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It’s also that the roads aren’t treated and won’t be treated. Y’all are used to de-icing (or whatever it is) to help clear up all the frozen patches. We got 3.5 inches overnight like five years ago and, in some shady spots, the roads had ice for days afterwards.