In this report, the development of a traffic education method and the application under experimental conditions are described. A number of methods were developed to teach young children (7 year olds) to make safe crossing decisions when traffic approaches. The methods instructed children to use a criterium based on (judged) time to passage (8 seconds) and improve the consistency of the decisions. A total number of 141 children was assigned to one of five training methods. Using a pre/posttest design the effectivity of the methods was established. During the pre- and posttest children were required to say whether they should or should not cross in front of an oncoming car with varying velocity and distance. One of the methods was a classroom training with video material, the other four took place in real traffic situations. One of the outside methods appeared to be most effective. With this method children were trained to identify the moment at which it was not longer possible to cross the street. In particular, the number of positive crossing decisions in cases in which only a few seconds were left until the passage of an approaching car diminished considerably as a result of the training. However, the same method applied by the parents in non-experimental conditions had no effect at all. Although it is possible to improve the performance of such a complex task as making safe crossing decisions of children as young as 7 years old, the method is not (yet) able to stand up against minor or major variations that undoubtly appear when the method is used by parents. In order to improve the effectivity in this kind of situation, steps have to be taken to diminish the likelihood that these variations occur. One of these steps could be improving the instruction of the parents. (A)
Samenvatting