Can child-pedestrians' hazard perception skills be enhanced?

Objective: Traffic collisions yield a substantial rate of morbidity and injury among child-pedestrians. We explored the formation of an innovative hazard perception training intervention - Child-pedestrians Anticipate and Act Hazard Perception Training (CA(2)HPT). Training was based upon enhancing participants' ability to anticipate potential hazards by exposing them to an array of traffic scenes viewed from different angles.

Method: Twenty-four 7-9-year-olds have participated. Trainees underwent a 40-min intervention of observing typical residential traffic scenarios in a simulated dome projection environment while engaging in a hazard detection task. Trainees were encouraged to note differences between the scenarios presented to them from separate angles (a pedestrian's point-of-view and a higher perspective angle). Next, trainees and control group members were required to perform crossing decision tasks.

Results: Trainees were found to be more aware of potential hazards related to restricted field of view relative to control.

Conclusions: Child pedestrians are responsive to training and actively detecting materialized hazards may enrich child-pedestrians' ability to cross roads.