Child pedestrian accidents are a significant problem in the UK with 165 deaths and 18.084 injuries in 1993 (HMSO, 1994). A further 37 children under 16 were killed and 7,349 injured in pedal cycle accidents. The study reported here forms part of a larger programme of research into child development which has been funded by the Department of Transport and which is aimed ultimately at improving child accident countermeasures. It arises from a report summarising key issues in road safety research (Thompson et al., 1996). There has been extensive study of child pedestrian accidents indicating a range of factors that may influence accident risk (e.g. Tight, 1992). These include inadequate supervision, a dangerous traffic environment, time spent in the traffic environment, inadequate understanding of what are safe and dangerous places to cross, inadequate judgement of when it is safe to cross, impulsive crossing without looking and active risk-seeking behaviour. The starting point for the present research was the observation that child accident risk, including pedestrian accident risk, is positively associated with problem behaviour and delinquency (see Junger, 1994). It is possible that this association arises at least in part from a reporting bias in that parents and teachers may perceive children who are involved in accidents as engaging in problem behaviour because of their accident involvement. It is also possible that increased traffic accident risk in children who show problem behaviour results from these children spending more time in the traffic environment. In fact, several factors external to the child have been found to be associated both with problem behaviour and accidents. These include health and psychiatric problems in the family, educational level of the mother, age of the mother, marital tensions among parents, child-rearing practices and adverse life events (see Junger, 1994). A possibility that requires serious attention is that there is some characteristic of the child that places him or her at greater risk of accident as well as increasing his or her propensity to engage in anti-social behaviour. There is now clear evidence that social deviance as a personality dimension is linked with risky driving practices and accidents in adults and newly qualified teenage drivers (see Robins, 1966; West and Hall, 1994) and it is possible that this same dimension may be linked with risky traffic-related behaviour in young children as well. The following paragraphs review evidence on the relationship between problem behaviour and accident risk. This leads to an examination of factors that might underlie the association which in turn leads to a specification of the aims and objectives of this study. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting