Perception of Road Safety in Children's Environment

Francisco Alonso^1, , Cristina Esteban¹, Francisco Tortosa² and Sergio Useche¹

¹DATS (Development and Advising in Traffic Safety) Research Group, INTRAS (University Research Institute on Traffic and Road Safety), University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

²PRECOVIR (Prevention of Risk Behaviour on the Road), INTRAS (Research Institute on Traffic and Road Safety), University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Cite this paper:
Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Francisco Tortosa and Sergio Useche. Perception of Road Safety in Children's Environment. American Journal of Educational Research. 2017; 5(3):273-278. doi: 10.12691/education-5-3-7

Abstract

Recent evidence has shown that children constitute a key population group regarding traffic accidents, being consequences of crashes involving children a major factor affecting their physical and mental integrity and welfare. Furthermore, it has been also stated that if children perceive existing risks on their environment in an accurate manner, probably their safety outcomes will be better than those registered in the long term by children who does not recognize some potential hazards. For this reason, it becomes relevant the task to study the perceptions related to road safety in the children’s environment, both for them as from their parents, who are their primary caregivers and companions on their daily trips. The central objective of this study was to describe the factors related to the perception of road safety in the children's environment and how different environmental factors affect it, from the perspective of children and their parents. As results, it was found that almost 70% of children feel safe when they circulate by their city as pedestrians; on the other hand, but 13% of them perceives this scenario as quite unsafe. The main reasons for perceiving road environment as unsafe were the amount of traffic (40%), disrespect for traffic rules (31%), and road insecurity in general (20%). On the other hand, small-size of cities (33%), good status of road safety (28%) and little traffic (20%) are associated to a safe perception of cities or towns. It has been also observed that children usually perceive safety in their environment when favorable measures for pedestrian are implemented, such as the case of pedestrian crossings, semaphores and broader sidewalks. In many cases, children perceive environments as safe spaces, but there are many environmental elements and factors related to road traffic that must be addressed by public agencies to improve both the safety perception as objective road safety for children.

Keywords:
road safety children parents perception of road safety children’s environment traffic accidents

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