Media Release - 26 October 2006

Child pedestrians 'cross at the wrong time' -- study

Nearly 60 per cent of children involved in a simulated pedestrian study "crossed the road" at the wrong moment, a Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) study has found.

And the critically incorrect decision could have cost the youngsters their lives in real life.

Senior Research Fellow Dr Jennie Oxley said the study, which will be presented at a Gold Coast road safety conference tomorrow, showed that young children generally had poor skills at reliably selecting safe gaps in traffic.

"It seems that children primarily use distance rather than the speed of an approaching vehicle to make judgements about safe crossing gaps," Dr Oxley said. "So a vehicle far away is judged 'safer' irrespective of its travelling speed.

"This may be particularly pertinent to child pedestrians, who are perhaps taught to only cross the road when the oncoming vehicle is far away."

The study looked at the reactions of 71 Victorian school children, aged between six and 10. The children were shown a simulated traffic scene of an undivided, straight two-way residential road from the perspective of a pedestrian on the side of the road.

In individual testing, researchers asked the children to press "yes" or "no" keys on a computer to indicate if and when they would cross the road as various scenarios were played out on the screen.

"The number of children who made a critically incorrect crossing decision, which may have resulted in a collision in real life, is of great concern," Dr Oxley said. "And age was a strong predictor of wrong decisions, with six-year-olds almost 12 times more likely than 10-year-olds to choose the wrong gap."

Dr Oxley said MUARC was now developing a package to train children on a simulator to improve road-crossing skills.

Seven MUARC researchers are presenting papers at the Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference from today until Friday.

The program is available from the conference website.

Media can contact Senior Media Communications Officer Ms Allison Harding for interviews on +61 3 9905 1255 or 0419 302 520.