In 1997, school age in Norway will be reduced from 7 to 6, which means that about 62,000 new school pedestrians will appear on the roads. Although younger children are at much greater risk than older children, in much of contemporary road safety research and statistics children between 5 and 9 are treated as one group. This paper examines the physiological, perceptual and cognitive qualifications of 6-7 year olds to meet traffic demands. A significant part of pedestrian task is to gather relevant information about traffic situations, evaluate them and decide how to act. The ability of 6-7 year olds to meet such demands, sustain attention and resist distractions in traffic is discussed. There are substantial differences between 6-7 year olds and older children regarding safe performance of the pedestrian task. These mainly relate to the attentional and cognitive elements and only to a lesser degree to the perceptual aspects. The main differences between the children concern their ability to allocate and sustain attention in an ongoing activity, to predict events and to foresee possible outcomes of traffic situations, as well as to generalise and thus to benefit adequately from past experience. These differences should have implications for the allocation of free school transport for the youngest children.
Abstract