Not just elementary school students, but also older ones Children are often overwhelmed by complex traffic situations. Right now, after starting school, drivers have to think about child safety.
Every 19 minutes a schoolchild has an accident on the road. The fact that children are less able to assess road traffic is also due to their incomplete development: under ten years of age, there are deficits in visual acuity and in peripheral vision also notice a slower response to visual stimuli.
Younger children are not yet able to judge so well
"When looking for crossing gaps between vehicles, the speed is often not adequately taken into account or even completely disregarded", says Martina Suing, graduate psychologist in the section "Basics of traffic and mobility behavior" at the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt). Adopting the driver's perspective and taking hidden dangers into account is often only as successful as an adult from around the age of 14.
A recent study by the German Insurers' Accident Research (UDV) also states that the children's decisions to cross roads improve with increasing age. But even children between the ages of 13 and 14 still have difficulties afterwards, especially when the vehicles are coming from the right. Apparently this requires higher cognitive performance.
Grades 3-6 most at risk as pedestrians
"When you switch to secondary school, the risk of having an accident in traffic increases sharply," says Suing, a graduate psychologist. Children between the ages of 10 and 14 are most at risk as cyclists. The risk of having an accident as a pedestrian is higher in elementary school age and at the beginning of secondary school; however, at this age, at least as many children have accidents as car occupants.
So that children learn how to behave appropriately and move confidently in traffic, parents shouldn't bring their children to school by car, but rather walk together. Parent taxis also block streets and paths around the school and transform the access area into a confusing danger zone.
Promote child safety
This is what parents and grandparents can do: Practice a fixed route to school and choose the safest route, not the shortest; Orientation is provided by a plan on the way to school. Routines such as automatically stopping at the roadside and looking left-right-left make it easier for children to concentrate on difficult tasks, such as assessing the speed of a car. Parents should let children decide for themselves when they want to cross the street and only take corrective action if necessary. In addition, it is important to only allow children to ride their bikes with helmets right from the start.
And this is how drivers are considerate: Drive slowly and carefully on streets with obstacles to sight such as parked cars, in residential areas, near school buildings, playgrounds and sports fields, etc. Expect children on the side of the road to suddenly run across the street because friends are waiting on the other side of the street or they are chasing a ball. For a change of perspective, it is helpful to crouch down between parked cars for child safety: This way you can determine for yourself how much or better how little a child sees.
