Children's perception of safety and danger on the road

Abstract

This study investigates the ability of children between 5 and 11 years to select safe places to cross the street. The children were presented with situations which were either extremely safe or manifestly dangerous and were asked to correctly identify these. In other cases, they were asked to choose for themselves routes across the road which they thought would be safe. The tasks were presented in various ways: by means of a table-top simulation on which traffic scenarios had been contrived; by means of photographs of road situations; and by taking the children to real-world sites in the streets near their schools. All the experiments showed a similar pattern of results. Five- and 7-year-olds exhibited very poor skill in identifying dangerous road-crossing sites. Their judgments relied exclusively on the visible presence of cars in the vicinity. Other factors such as blind summits, obscuring obstacles or complex junctions were never recognized as threatening situations. They also showed an unwillingness to make detours when planning their own routes, even where the direct route was manifestly dangerous. Nine-year-olds showed a higher level of ability and 11-year-olds showed quite good skill in these judgements. No sex differences were apparent. These results suggest that young children up to about 9 years must often be at considerable risk as they do not have the ability to recognize a location as dangerous, even if they know the mechanics of the Green Cross Code. The implications for road safety education are discussed.

Causes and consequences of pedestrian injuries in children

“…It has been demonstrated by Ampofo-Boateng et al that young children up to about 9 years are often at considerable risk, as they do not have the ability to recognise a location as dangerous, even if they attended road-traffic safety instructions; therefore, this study should find entrance in the road-traffic safety education of drivers and families [1].…”

Should ‘Cyrus the Centipede’ take a hike? Effects of exposure to a pedestrian safety program on children's safety knowledge and self-reported behaviors

“…Even if programs like Cyrus achieve their goals of communicating pedestrian safety rules, and children in good faith try to follow those rules, can they do so? In fact, there is considerable evidence that such educational approaches are ultimately not very useful, as young children have trouble translating the information conveyed into appropriate action in complex traffic environments (e.g., Ampofp-Boateng & Thomson, 1991;Thomson et al, 2005;Zeedyk et al, 2001). For example, when children apply traffic safety rules, they often do so in a fashion that may place them at risk.…”

Can child-pedestrians’ hazard perception skills be enhanced?

“…Lastly, pedestrians age and traffic experience are also a prominent factor. According to AmpofoBoateng and Thomson (1991), the younger child-pedestrians are the more they are likely to base their evaluation of the safetylevel of a crossing site on a single factor -the presence or absence of vehicles on the road. Specifically, children aged 5 and 7 were found to determine the safety-level of a site purely on whether they can see vehicles on the road, where the mere presence of a vehicle (even remotely in the vicinity of the location) was correlated with these youngsters' identification of the situation as dangerous.…”