I work in child care and the regulations behind this are fucked. There's no gray area and staff risks prison time for not following them. I get how these laws and regulations get implemented. Even "good parents" will think it's completely reasonable to be late to pick up your children. Once in a while isn't a problem but when you are in charge of hundreds of kids and too many parents have that mentality it creates a cascade of issues for staff. (child care works have lives too) so please contact the school/facility if you are going to be late and don't be late constantly.

Here the kids just walked or cycled home. Bus if you lived further away or didn't wanna cycle in the winter. But I grew up in a small town in Estonia in the 00s. It may have been literally feared at the time by people not from our town, but generally nobody would hurt a 7 year old and even once you got older, usually people's beefs were with kids from the other towns nearby, not locals.