Identifying Gaps in Child Pedestrian Safety: Comparing What Children Do with What Parents Teach

Abstract

Vehicle/pedestrian conflicts are a primary cause of deaths among children age 5 to 12 in North America. Children under 14 are twice as likely as the general population to be involved in vehicle/pedestrian accidents. Parents may overestimate the cognitive abilities of children to handle complex traffic situations and may assume that pedestrian rules taught to children at a young age will help safeguard them when crossing independently. For this reason, parental guidance on crossing safety was compared to actual practice by children, with and without accompanying parents or baby-sitters. Investigations were conducted in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, a midsize, urban community. Interviews were done of a small sample (30) of well-educated parents in the vicinity of facilities used by children. Their responses were compared with observations of children (208) crossing at signalized and nonsignalized intersections in the same areas. While a high proportion of parents, 87 percent, teach safety practices, and 70 percent restate them when crossing with their children, 20 percent do not make unobserved checks of their children. Of those parents who do make unobserved checks, 42 percent found that none of their safety rules were being followed. Observations of children, not necessarily related to the adults interviewed, found that children were less likely to search for traffic at signalized than at nonsignalized intersections ( p < 0.05). At nonsignalized intersections, 33 percent of unaccompanied children performed no visual search before crossing, increasing to 48 percent at signalized intersections. Even smaller numbers (< 6 percent) of unaccompanied children looked behind them for turning vehicles. These findings suggest that, while more research is needed to improve parental training and child response, more emphasis should be placed on responsibilities of drivers and on countermeasures in the traffic environment.