Abstract

Objectives:Adolescents experience high rates of road traffic injuries and deaths as pedestrians and cyclists. One likely reason for adolescents’ elevated traffic injury risk is their risky behaviour on the road. This study examined Chinese adolescents’ road behaviour using a nationwide survey.Methods:Across 7 Chinese provinces, 4,794 adolescents completed the Chinese version of the Adolescent Road User Behaviour Questionnaire (ARBQ). Results from t-tests and ANOVAs described the road behaviours of Chinese adolescent subgroups, and meta-analytic techniques and Kendall’s correlation analysis compared adolescent road behaviours between China and other countries (Iran and a high-income country composite).Results:Replicating previous reports from other countries, male adolescents in China generally reported more risk-taking on the road than females, and adolescents aged 15 years and over behaved in a riskier manner than younger ones. Adolescents in rural China reported more risky road behaviours than those who lived in cities, and adolescents who lived only with grandparents behaved more riskily than those who lived with parents only or with parents and grandparents. Adolescents previously involved in a traffic injury also reported riskier road behaviours. In cross-national comparisons, Chinese adolescents’ scores on unsafe road behaviours were lower, and scores on safe road behaviours were higher, than those in other nations. However, there were also several commonalities in how adolescents across countries ranked the frequency of engaging in specific risky road behaviours.Conclusions:Gender, age, living environment, and traffic injury experience affect adolescents’ reports of their risky road behaviour. Chinese adolescents reported more cautious behaviour than those in high-income countries and in Iran. Traffic injury interventions for adolescents should consider adolescent development as part of pedestrian safety training; results also have implications for guiding parents on how to supervise adolescents near traffic and on what infrastructure development strategies might best protect adolescents in traffic situations.

Highlights

  • Adolescents represent a vulnerable group for road traffic injury (RTI) [1, 2]

  • Preliminary analyses showed no interaction effect between grade and gender, so we analyzed gender and grade separately. t-tests showed male adolescents behaved in riskier ways and played more in roadways than female adolescents (p < 0.001)

  • Gender and age effects on Chinese adolescents’ road behaviours Consistent with previous studies [11, 12, 18,19,20], our results suggested that male adolescents reported more unsafe road behaviours than female adolescents

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Summary

Introduction

Adolescents represent a vulnerable group for road traffic injury (RTI) [1, 2]. According to data from the Global Burden of Disease project, 37,000 youths aged 10 to 19 years died in traffic accidents in 2016, and 2,420,000 youths were injured on the road [3]. The burden of RTIs is pronounced in low- and middle-income countries [4]. In China, 14,140 adolescents aged 10 to 19 years died in traffic accidents in 2016, and 1,034,286 adolescents were seriously injured. RTI is the second leading cause of death among children ages 10 to years old in China, and the leading cause of death for youth ages to 19 years old [5]

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