A vision for a safe traffic environment for children.

The risk of fatal injuries is higher for pedestrians and bicyclists, especially for children and elderly, than for other road users. Children frequently lack the ability to correctly direct and maintain their attention on traffic, to judge speeds, and localize sounds. Compared to adults, they also have more limited cones of visions, less capacity to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, and less ability to control their impulses. Elderly people because of the ageing process sometimes also lack the ability to correctly comprehend traffic situations. Therefore, special attention should be given to the design of the traffic environment for children and elderly. In this project the effect of physical measures is evaluated, aiming at increasing safety and mobility for especially children as pedestrians and bicyclists when crossing arterials in urban areas and describes the short and long term effects of a specific change of code and how the effect depends on site characteristics. Over 12 000 pedestrian and bicyclist movements were video filmed and analyzed and crash data from Sweden and Finland was scrutinized and children's opinion on how the road reconstructions and change of code affected their safety and mobility was gathered with questionnaires. The speeds of the vehicles at the studied sites were always significantly lowered at sites where speed cushions or elevated areas (at the intersection or crossing area) were installed, and it was proven by the crash data from Finland and Sweden that few of the pedestrians were killed at actual vehicle speed of 30 km/h or less. Children also stated in the questionnaires that the security had improved at sites where the actual vehicle speeds were lowered to around 30 km/h. The outcome of this project is a proposal of design principles for a safe road environment for children as pedestrians and bicyclists. Clarity, simplicity and visibility together with low vehicle speeds, that is 30 km/h or below, are the basic parameters that represent a safe traffic environment for children (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.