Interventions to improve pedestrian skills in children

Conclusion: Indications for effectiveness

Pedestrian skills training leads to improved child pedestrian crossing skills. Children in a skill training program were about two times more likely to cross the streets more often. Findings also suggest that children can learn to discriminate dangerous elements in trafflc situations using a computer program and transfer that knowledge to real-life environments. Duperrex et al. concludes that pedestrian safety education can change observed road crossing behaviour, but whether this reduces the risk of pedestrian injury in road traffic crashes is unknown.

Recommendations (for research & practice)

Multi-faceted programmes and those that involve parents are more likely to be successful
Practical roadside experience is an essential ingredient of pedestrian skills training

Basic and applied research must continue to explain better the processes required for children to negotiate street environments safely. Empirically supported and theoretically-driven prevention efforts must be developed to improve existing options, and must be honed and then demonstrated effective via scientifically-sound experimental trials.

More research is needed to perform high quality controlled programmes in school or community settting in European countries.

Review Date: 18/12/2012
Version: 1.1
Status: Publish

Procedure
Articles (reviews) and reports were included that were published between 2002 and 2012, in English and Dutch. The outcomes of the study were reviewed by the Dutch Consumer Safety Institute.

Strategy: An online literature search was performed by a researcher of the Consumer Safety Institute and after this a more thorough search was performed by the documentation centre of CSI (Catalog CenV, Pubmed, Injury lit, Google, Websites, 'Grey' literature). Results of each search were compared on differences and potential missed studies were added. First the titles and then abstracts were scanned in order to include relevant studies. In the case of insufficient information obtained from abstracts the full text articles were obtained. Relevant articles were scrutinized and background documents were created. In addition, relevant references of included articles were checked on new and relevant articles (i.e., snowball search).

Besides the literature search this evidence statement is also based on information of the Good Practice Guide of the Child Safety Alliance.

The outcomes of the study were reviewed by an expert in the field of child safety in 2012.

Background Documents                                                                                                                 

Child Safety Good Practice Guide : good investments in unintential child injury prevention and safety promotion (version 1)
M. MacKay, J. Vincenten, M. Brussoni, L. Towner ...[et al.] (2006)

Safety education of pedestrians for injury prevention : a systematic review of randomised controlled trials (version 1.0)
Olivier Duperrex, Frances Bunn, Ian Roberts (2002)

Using interactive multimedia to teach pedestrian safety : an exploratory study (version 1.0)
Ann Glang, John Noell, Dennis Ary ...[et al.] (2005)

Brief report : Increasing children's safe pedestrian behaviors through simple skills training (version 1.1)
B.K. Barton, D.C. Schwebe, B.A. Morrongiello (2007)

Child Pedestrian Injury: A Review of Behavioral Risks and Preventive Strategies (version 1.0)
David C. Schwebel, Aaron L. Davis, Elisabeth E. O'Neal (2012)