Do child pedestrians deliberately take risks when they are in a hurry? An experimental study on a simulator

In order to ascertain whether or not child pedestrians voluntarily take risks, a street-crossing task in an urban environment with vehicle traffic was administered individually to 80 children aged 10 years using a pedestrian simulator. The task, which was presented as a contest, consisted of attaining two objectives in a limited time. The subjects were divided into three conditions that differed only in the number of constraints that had to be taken into account in order to win the contest. The data show that the degree of urgency felt, measured by the amount of time taken, increased as the number of constraints increased. At the same time, the frequency of two of the risky behaviors (not using the pedestrian crossing, running across the road) increased, whereas the frequency of observation failures was independent of the condition. Not using the pedestrian crossing and running across the road were therefore deliberately taken risks, whereas observation failures can be attributed to a control deficit. The discussion includes suggestions for training.

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