Evaluation of a gamified e-learning platform to improve traffic safety among elementary school pupils in Belgium

Children are highly represented in statistics relating to road traffic injuries and fatalities. There are multiple risk factors that together create an increased risk for children in traffic, some of the major reasons include children’s inability to efficiently and actively scan the environment and look for information relevant to the traffic environment, inconsistent behavior, and less developed hazard perception skills. Traffic safety education is one of the most important means for improving knowledge and skills required for children to behave safely in traffic. This study evaluated a newly developed and gamified e-learning platform meant to promote traffic safety among elementary school pupils in Belgium. Participants in this study were from four grades of elementary school and voluntarily took part in the training. They followed a self-study program at home for approximately 15 min per week over a period of 5 weeks in total. The platform included four modules: traffic knowledge, situation awareness, risk detection, and risk management. For each of these modules, a set of photos and videos were used as stimuli and selected from a database of camera recordings of real-life situations. Half of each module consisted of familiar situations for the pupils (i.e., own municipality), while the other half of each module consisted of unfamiliar situations for the pupils (i.e., other municipalities). A fifth module, “the finale,” contained a mix of the first four modules. In total, 44 elementary school pupils (9–13 years old) completed the program. During the first round of measurement (i.e., the first four modules), pupils performed significantly better in the traffic knowledge module when compared with the other three modules. Further, in comparison with unfamiliar situations, pupils scored significantly higher in familiar situations. During the second round of measurement (i.e., the fifth module), pupils achieved higher scores in the risk detection and risk management modules when contrasted to the first measurement. The effect of gamification elements is discussed and the results also indicate the type of traffic safety issues to be emphasized in traffic safety education for children.