Having overcome the frailty of childhood, adolescents become the healthiest and fittest members of western society. Unfortunately, this health gain is partly lost because of a concurrent sharp increase in injury-related mortality. Traffic crashes are responsible for approximately 35% to 40% of the injury-related mortality among adolescents in Europe and the USA. To date, most prevention efforts have concentrated on reducing the exceptionally high crash risk among adolescent car drivers. In contrast, relatively little policy and research attention has been devoted to young adolescents of 10 to 17 years of age, who in a late-licensing country are still too young to have a driving license. There are two main reasons that make this attention important. First, recent studies on mental and biological development in adolescence and its impact on risky behaviour suggest that from age 10 onward, elevated levels of road risk are highly probable. However, risky behaviour in traffic is not monitored. Second, little is known about the effects of road safety education in terms of the relevance of risk behaviours that are targeted and the aetiology of these behaviours. The dissertation aims to contribute to the development of high quality education programmes for young adolescent road users. To this end, it focuses on the following objectives: (a) a deeper understanding of the magnitude and nature of road risk in early adolescence; (b) the identification of risk-increasing factors; (c) the assessment of the effects of some road safety education programmes used in Dutch schools and (d) the influence of the safety of the road system on young adolescent road mortality.
Samenvatting