An investigation was carried out with 150 children between 4 and 9 years old, as well as their mothers. Criteria chosen were age, sex, social status and living area. The investigation was subdivided into 14 part-investigations, i.e. systematic observations of behaviour, traffic games, simulated experiments, social and ecological boundary conditions, educational attitude of mothers, personality of the children. In the description of the results the following points are discussed: behaviour in crossing roads and simulated road crossing, the choice of a traffic-safe route, traffic knowledge and traffic understanding, recognizing traffic situations, interruption of action due to optical and acoustic signals, ideas of time and speed, significant points of parental traffic education, traffic consciousness of mothers, social and ecological boundary conditions, dependence of traffic safety on the personality structure of the children. It is reported that there are drastic alterations with respect to the functions investigated with increasing age. The majority of parents consider that traffic education is an important task, but great uncertainty was shown. Results of the investigation concern the question of pedagogic/psychological conception, or rather the way of combining differing procedures for the purpose of lowering traffic dangers for children. In this respect, the necessity of realizing a combination of totally differing and inter-related measures, which refer to completely varying recipients, are underlined.
Samenvatting