Despite the intention that they should increase pedestrian safety, designated crossings (that is, marked out points for road crossing such as stand-alone signal-controlled crossings, zebras, and junction lights with a pedestrian phase) are known to be problematic in character (Carsten, Sherborne & Rothengatter, 1998). Bly, Dix & Stephenson (1999), comparing child pedestrian injury events in Great Britain, France and the Netherlands, found that children in Britain face a higher risk when using designated crossings. The most recent figures (2001) on pedestrian casualties for the UK bear out this point, with cases at all levels of severity tending to be more common at designated crossing sites than within 50 metres of them. Whilst the precise reasons for this are unclear, it may be the result of children in Britain also making less use of such crossings, and thus having a poorer grasp of what behaviours are appropriate at these points and why. It would therefore be valuable to ascertain what children do understand about designated crossings, and to attempt to ameliorate any gaps via educational intervention, especially since there has been little previous work of this kind. Indeed, at present, none of the practical pedestrian training schemes for children in use in the UK address safe use of designated crossings. Task analysis reveals that safe use of designated crossings is highly complex, involving between 14 and 19 distinct behaviours (depending on crossing type), deployed in three separate phases (preparation to use, looking immediately prior to crossing, and execution). In addition, integration of these elements into a co-ordinated sequence that can be used at different sites almost certainly depends on a conceptual understanding of the specific reasons for engaging in each of them. Given this complexity, it would perhaps be unsurprising if children's road-crossing performance at designated crossings were poor. It also raises questions, though, about what forms of educational intervention would be helpful. Practical training methods (that is, where children make actual crossing decisions and related judgements under supervised and structured conditions, and receive feedback on the adequacy of those decisions and judgements) have been shown to be effective in improving pedestrian skills in children as young as 5 years (Thomson & Whelan, 1997). Moreover, the emphasis these methods place on learning via the shaping of behaviour in context is particularly suited to the complexity of designated crossings. However, in this instance carrying out training of this kind at the roadside might well be problematic because of a conflict between the need for diverse experiences to build up flexible skills, and the geographical distances likely to be involved in visiting a range of sites. There is therefore a strong case for developing computer-based training materials for building up designated crossing skills, in view of their capacity to capture diversity in a more manageable way. Materials of this form have already been demonstrated to be effective in improving generic pedestrian skills in primary age children, when used as a focus for decision-making informed by discussion, amongst small groups of children working under the guidance of an adult trainer (Tolmie, Thomson & Foot, 2000; Tolmie, Thomson, Foot, Whelan, Sarvary & Morrison, 2002). The main objectives of the present project were therefore: * to develop software for computer-supported training of primary age children in safe use of the main types of designated pedestrian crossings (pelicans/puffins/toucans, zebras, and junction traffic lights with pedestrian phases); and * to evaluate the effectiveness of this training by implementing it with samples of children aged 6, 8 and 10 years, pre-testing these children at the roadside to establish their baseline capabilities, post-testing them to measure changes in performance, and comparing these changes with those exhibited over the same period by untrained control samples of the same age, and with the performance of adults. (Author/publisher)
Abstract