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.
['Meir|Anat|A|', 'Oron-Gilad|Tal|T|', 'Parmet|Yisrael|Y|']
D000063:Accidents, Traffic D000367:Age Factors D001364:Awareness D002648:Child D005260:Female D006266:Health Education D006801:Humans D008297:Male D000069636:Pedestrians D010465:Perception D012306:Risk
Hazard perception Skills Children Educational intervention Road crossing Traffic crashes