TRAINING CHILDREN TO MAKE SAFE CROSSING DECISIONS --ROAD USER BEHAVIOR. THEORY AND RESEARCH. PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE 2ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROAD SAFETY HELD IN GRONINGEN, NETHERLANDS, AUGUST 1987

Generally, young children are able to comply with rules such as 'don't cross when traffic is approaching'. However, as children grow older this relatively simple strategy often cannot be applied. They more often encounter traffic situations in which it is no longer possible to wait until the road is completely clear. To decide whether it is safe to cross in presence of traffic is a complex task. Ideally, an estimation must be made of the time a vehicle will need to reach the crossing place and this requires in its turn a judgement of the distance and the speed of the vehicle. In order to speed up a spontaneous learning process by trial-and-error, a training method for primary school children was developed and experimentally tested using a pre/post test design. The experimental group consisted of 26 first graders, the control group of 46 first graders. The training was given individually in a real traffic situation. Each child was trained twice for about 15 minutes in one week. Every time a car approached, the children were required to mark the moment at which it was no longer possible to cross the street safely. On the basis of the computer-registrated time to passage verbal feedback was given. The critical point was 8 seconds which was chosen on the basis of empirical information of crossing speed. The results indicated that the decisions of the experimental group improved. In particular, the number of positive crossing decisions in cases in which only a few seconds were left until the passage of an approachaing car diminished considerably. In the pretest almost 70% of the children indicated they could cross in intervals equal or less than 7 seconds; in the post test this percentage was 36%. The decision of the control group with these intervals remained at the same level (60%). In addition, the children changed from a criterion predominantly based on distance to an estimation of time to passage, which is a much safer criterion.(a) for the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 815404.