Review of traditional forms of classroom instruction in road safety suggests that such teaching improves children's knowledge about road safety, but typically fails to transfer to behaviour in the traffic environment. Children confuse the meaning of simple safety and traffic concepts, and fail to understand the rules that they are taught. The recent shift of emphasis from theoretical to practical training methods agrees with current psychological thinking that learning progresses, not from the general to the specific, but from exposure to specific actual situations to the gradual elaboration of abstract conceptual understanding. Research shows that instruction methods are most effective when they proceed from action to concept, eg from first-hand road experience to developing understanding of traffic movement and the interaction of different types of road user. This article outlines research by the authors, designed to explore age-related differences in what children attend to. Samples of 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds, and a sample of adults, were compared, and showed how increase of age improves children's ability to pick up information relevant to crossing roads. The researchers are developing computer animations, to help children learn what to attend to and make decisions about safe gaps in traffic. For the covering abstract see IRRD E102647.