Investigated in this study are accidents involving accompanied or unaccompanied children in road traffic. The study is based on 3,716 accident reports by the police on children involved in traffic accidents in the state of Hessen, Federal Republic of Germany. The term "children" refers in this study to all persons under 18 years of age. A literature review showed that children are involved with road traffic with the consent of their parents at a relatively young age, and often without being accompanied. Some of the findings of this research that were noted are as follows: (a) children become road traffic users at an early age, often without any surveillance by adults; (b) in all observed age groups and accident severity classes, the accident involvement of boys was significantly higher than that of girls; (c) the overwhelming majority of children involved in accidents were accompanied; (d) the degree to which accident-involved children are accompanied by an older person correlates with the age of the children; (e) children who are involved in traffic accidents are far more likely to be active than passive traffic participants; and (f) the frequency of injuries suffered by unaccompanied children involved in traffic accidents is significantly higher than that of accompanied children.
Samenvatting