Effectiveness of Virtual Reality for Teaching Pedestrian Safety

Abstract

Sixty percent to 70% of pedestrian injuries in children under the age of 10 years are the result of the child either improperly crossing intersections or dashing out in the street between intersections. The purpose of this injury prevention research study was to evaluate a desktop virtual reality (VR) program that was designed to educate and train children to safely cross intersections. Specifically, the objectives were to determine whether children can learn pedestrian safety skills while working in a virtual environment and whether pedestrian safety learning in VR transfers to real world behavior. Following focus groups with a number of key experts, a virtual city with eight interactive intersections was developed. Ninety-five children participated in a community trial from two schools (urban and suburban). Approximately half were assigned to a control group who received an unrelated VR program, and half received the pedestrian safety VR intervention. Children were identified by group and grade by colored tags on their backpacks, and actual street crossing behavior of all children was observed 1 week before and 1 week after the interventions. There was a significant change in performance after three trials with the VR intervention. Children learned safe street crossing within the virtual environment. Learning, identified as improved street-crossing behavior, transferred to real world behavior in the suburban school children but not in the urban school. The results are discussed in relation to possibilities for future VR interventions for injury prevention.

Validation of a low-cost virtual reality system for training street-crossing. A comparative study in healthy, neglected and non-neglected stroke individuals

“…Consequently, the generalization of our results to other populations should be interpreted cautiously. Finally, our sample was not assessed in a real environment; however, the effectiveness of VR for teaching pedestrian safety and the transfer of this knowledge to real world behavior has been previously demonstrated in both healthy subjects (McComas, MacKay, & Pivik, 2002) However, the results of the present study involving healthy controls and stroke patients with and without USN confirm the clinical effectiveness of the street-crossing system, as shown by the VR outcomes, the scores of the neuropsychological tests, and the correlations between them. In addition, although the system is immersive and realistic, it does not require complex hardware configuration or expensive components, facilitating its integration and use in the clinical setting.…”

“…Virtual street-crossing systems are particularly interesting because they provide therapists with ecological and behavioral data for the evaluation of extrapersonal neglect and patient autonomy in the outdoor environment. Virtual street-crossing systems have also been used to educate children (McComas, MacKay, & Pivik, 2002;Schwebel & McClure, 2010;Thomson, Tolmie, Foot, Whelan, Sarvary, & Morrison, 2005), to study the performance of pedestrians (Simpson, Johnston, & Richardson, 2003;Wu, Ashmead, & Bodenheimer, 2009), and to rehabilitate gait in stroke patients (Boian, Burdea, Deutsch, & Winter, 2004).…”

Review of safety and mobility issues among older pedestrians

“…In recent years, studies aimed at training people through the use of simulators and virtual reality have emerged in the field of road safety. These tools have already proven powerful as training devices for preventing child pedestrian injury (e.g., McComas et al, 2002;Thomson et al, 2005) or for teaching basic driving skills to older adults (for a review, see Boot et al, 2014). But for older pedestrians, behavioral training studies using virtual reality are still rare.…”

Road-Crossing Safety in Virtual Reality: A Comparison of Adolescents With and Without ADHD

“…This is most noticeable in the field of view afforded by the HMD, which is 48 degrees compared to approximately 180 degrees in the real world. The narrower field of view could, Road Crossing and ADHD 24 however, have a positive influence on attentional behavior by forcing the participant to turn the head in the direction of oncoming traffic, a part of training to cross safely (McComas et al, 2002). As virtual reality technology becomes more sophisticated, such restrictions in view will likely be reduced and the simulation will become even more realistic.…”

“…McComas, MacKay and Pivik (2002) demonstrated the validity of virtual reality as a medium for training road-crossing skills by assessing transfer from desktop displays to improved roadcrossing skills in the actual road-crossing environments of the participants.…”