Grossing roads safely: The effects of training on improving children's road crossing decisions

Pedestrian crashes are among the most common causes of death and serious injury to young children in the developed world. An initial phase of our research showed that younger children (6-7 year olds) and those with poor or under-developed functional skills may be at higher risk of crash involvement, compared with older children with well developed skills. While education is considered an essential tool to teach children road safety skills, current programs may be limited because they may not target specific skills and are not tailored for those who are most in need of training. A practical education and training program using a simulated road environment was developed that aimed at improving road-crossing skills amongst children most at risk. The training provided intensive positive and negative feedback on road-crossing choices and focussed on identification of safe traffic gaps, and assessing time gap rather than distance or speed alone when making crossing judgements. The effectiveness of the training package was assessed using a case-control study design, and compared road-crossing responses prior to, immediately after, and approximately one month after training. The findings showed significant reductions in critically incorrect responses (where a child decided to cross but the time gap was too small for a safe crossing) immediately after training (56%) and one month after training (47o/") by the case group (n=34), compared to responses prior to training, and relative to any changes in the control group (n=28). The results show that the training program is a safe and effective way to improve children's road-crossing skills. Crashes involving pedestrians are severe in nature and pedestrian safety is a serious community concern. Two hundred and twenty seven pedestrians were killed Australia-wide between January 2006 and December 2006 and over 2,500 sustained serious injuries as pedestrians in 2002. Children under the age of 16 years constituted a substantial proportion of pedestrian deaths (9%) and a larger proportion of serious injuries (21%) (Australian Transport Safety Bureau, 2007). Research suggests that children between the ages of 6 to 10 are at highest risk of death and injury, with an estimated minimum four times the risk of collision compared to adult pedestrians (Struik, Alexander, Cave, Fleming, Lyttle & Stone, 1988; Thomson, 1996). This is most likely due to the beginning of independent unsupervised travel and increases in exposure at a time when their road strategies, skills and understanding are not yet fully developed. Making the decision about when it is safe to cross the road in relation to available gaps in the traffic is a complex task. This task requires competence in a range of functional skills and much of the literature suggests that young children are less competent in traffic than adults because of poorly developed perceptual, attentional, and cognitive abilities (Connelly, Conaglen, Parsonson & lsler, 1998; Dunbar, Hill & Lewis, 2001; Whitebread & Neilson, 2000). Further, young children are generally inconsistent in their road safety behaviours, are easily distracted, have difficulty estimating the speed and distance of oncoming cars appropriately, and are poor at recognising dangerous places to cross. Given that behavioural factors play a large role in traffic safety, education and training has long been advocated as a means of teaching children the critical road safety skills and behaviour to be able to interact with traffic safely. Researchers have examined the effectiveness of training children in a variety of road safety skills such as the ability to identify safe and dangerous places to cross, road-crossing safety behaviours (e.9. looking both ways before crossing), and the ability to detect relevant road-crossing features in orderto make safe road crossing decisions (Young & Lee, 1987; Zeedyk, Wallace, Carcary, Jones, & Larter,2001;Miller, Austin, & Rohn, 2004; Tolmie, Thomson, Foot, Whelan, Morrison, & Mclaren, 2005). The effectiveness of these training programs are varied, with some showing significant and long lasting improvements, while others have only shown minimal etfectiveness. Some researchers have investigated the potential benefits of training road-crossing skills amongst children in a simulator environment (e.9. McComas, McKay & Pivik, 2002; Thomson, Tolmie, Foot, whelan, Sarvary & Morrison, 2005; Glang, Noell, Ary & swartz, 2005; Foot, Thomson, Tolmie, Whelan, Morrison & Sarvary, 2006). Thomson et al (2005) examined the influence of virtual reality training on the roadside crossing judgements of child pedestrians. They found that the trained children crossed more quickly, missed fewer safe opportunities to cross, and accepted smaller traffic gaps without increasing the number of risky decisions. However, there was no effect of training for the number of tight fits that trained children accepted. Other studies have found that simulator training packages have improved children's ability to identify dangerous vehicles (Glang et al, 2005), and improved their ability to predict drivers' intentions (Foot et al, 2006). However, post-testing in these two studies occurred immediately after training (Glang et al, 2005) or oneweek after training (Foot et al, 2006) with no longer term follow-up to see if the results would be maintained. There are a number of road safety educational programs currently available in Australian States and Territories (e.9. 'RoadSmart', and 'Safe Routes to School'), however there may be scope for some improvement, particularly in terms of providing more information than road safety knowledge only, and improving the design of training programs. Of particular concern is the argument that young children's ability to apply their knowledge to safer performance or improved behaviour is poor, and that transfer is not automatic (Zeedyk, et al, 2001; Ampofo-Boateng & Thomson, 1991; Rothengatter, 1981). lt has also been suggested that the design of training programs could be improved by developing more practical programs that provide the opportunity to develop skills rather than knowledge alone. Computer simulation programs offer a safe environment to learn practical road crossing skills (Foot et al, 2006). The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a training package which incorporated a computer simulator to teach children road safety skills, particularly selecting safe gaps in traffic in which to cross the road. lt was part of a larger study that also examined the behavioural and functional factors associated with the ability to select safe gaps in traffic.