The purpose of this paper is to present information on the feasibility of educational objectives in the field of traffic education for young children. In order to do so. it is necessary to answer four questions. These are: (1) Which behavior is desired? (2) Which functions and abilities are required for a safe performance of the tasks described in question 1? On the basis of existing literature a large number of necessary functions and abilities could be distinguished. These were combined into four groups related to: the perception of oncoming traffic, judgments to be made, the decision-making process and some additional tasks. (3) How do the necessary functions and abilities develop and at what age can they be used adequately? A survey of the traffic safety literature as well as the general child development literature forms the main part of this paper. (4) What implications does this development have for the leaching objectives? The results of the literature survey show, that a great lack of relevant research does exist. The relation of most studies with the actual traffic task is often a very weak one, even within the traffic safety literature. Only a few studies have been carried out in actual traffic situations and even in these studies the relation with crossing behavior has not been studied. Hence, it is not possible at present to give a detailed set of objectives feasible at a certain age. Although some objectives can be defined, much more research is necessary before final conclusions can be reached.
Abstract