Over the last twenty years, there has been a decline in serious accidents involving children in West Germany. The opinion of the author of this presentation is that the German Road Safety Council (Deutscher Verkehrssicherheitsrat) and its members are partly responsible for this decline, through the "children and traffic" programme. Since 1980, this programme has been applied throughout Germany. From the outset, it had a three-tier approach, namely: (1) orienting technical and legal aspects of road traffic towards children; (2) educating adult road users, in particular, and (3) educating parents, first of all those with children of pre-school age. Two parental courses included are on: motorists, with regard to the behaviour of children in traffic; "children as pedestrians"; and on "children on bicycles". Since 1993, there has been a special programme for parents with children in the first grade, namely: the "children out and about" programme.
Samenvatting