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Recommendations
Goal
To enhance the well
being and safety of children by
- reducing their risk
of injury while walking;
- increasing their
physical activity level; and
- creating a more
pedestrian-friendly environment.
Recommendation #1
Enhance public
awareness about the need for
improved safety for child pedestrians while
promoting the health and environmental
benefits of walking. Create
coordinated national, state, and local public information
campaigns that increase public awareness
and understanding of:
- The interdependent
relationship among personal health,
safety, community livability, and environmental
protection.
- Pedestrians as road
users who, like motorists and
bicyclists, need to be safe in traffic.
- The manner and
degree to which engineering solutions
can enhance pedestrian safety (for example,
traffic calming, separation of pedestrians from
motor vehicle traffic, better crosswalk controls).
- The usefulness and
cost effectiveness of traffic law
enforcement.
Recommendation #2
Modify the behavior
and attitudes of both pedestrians
and drivers to improve sharing of
the road.
- Develop and
encourage strategies that improve sharing
the road, and increase mutual respect
of pedestrians and motorists by teaching both
groups the rules of the road.
- Help the public
understand the degree to which
excessive speed increases stopping distances and
thus increases the risk of pedestrian death.
- Encourage the public
to support enforcement of
posted speed limits (especially in school zones and
residential areas), laws that prohibit passing of
school buses, and yield-to-pedestrian laws. Support
the development and use of innovative technologies,
such as red light cameras to help enforce
traffic laws.
- Develop, evaluate,
and disseminate programs to
educate parents and drivers about children’s abilities
and limitations as pedestrians in traffic. These
programs should take into account different parenting
styles and abilities. Encourage parents to
supervise their children in traffic and teach
their children age appropriate pedestrian safety
rules.
Recommendation #3
Modify the physical
environment to better support
pedestrian traffic.
- At the national
level:
- Establish
transportation policies that encourage local
communities to integrate pedestrian access
and safety into every phase of transportation planning.
- Foster collaboration
among federal agencies and
national professional groups to help develop
and promote public policy that leverages resources
to achieve the most effective programs
without duplicating efforts.
- Develop road
construction standards that are more
conducive to safe walking.
- Compile and
disseminate local "best practices" that
foster pedestrian safety, especially those that
emphasize the use of low cost solutions and
new technologies.
- Help teach traffic
engineers and engineering students
how to retrofit streets and roads to make
them safer. Develop and disseminate curricula,
sponsor professional conferences, and
assist with continuing education.
- At the state and
local levels:
- Encourage state and
local officials to revise laws,
ordinances, and practices to promote the construction
of sidewalks and traffic calming measures,
such as roundabouts, speed humps, and
other road designs.
- Encourage city
planners, engineers, real estate developers,
and landscape architects to consider pedestrian
safety—particularly for children and
persons with disabilities—when designing
new communities or modify existing ones.
- Encourage local
officials, designers, and planners to
enhance pedestrian accessibility and safety
when building or remodeling schools, recreational
sites, and businesses.
Recommendation #4
Develop and conduct
effective safe walking programs.
- Ensure that programs
to prevent child pedestrian injuries
receive public and private program support
sufficient to provide programs in all states.
This may require corporate and Congressional champions
and a national spokesperson.
- Encourage federal
agencies responsible for road
safety to make available effective pedestrian safety
training activities for children. Encourage federal,
state, and local departments of education to
establish safe routes to school.
- Encourage states to
develop statewide pedestrian safety
plans that reflect community needs. Encourage
each state department of transportation to establish
and adequately staff a pedestrian safety office to coordinate
and conduct training programs, conduct public information
and education campaigns, and develop local programs throughout
the state.
- At the community
level, createmultidisciplinary coalitions to
develop programs that emphasize safety aspects and the health
and environmental benefits of walking. Encourage parents,
teachers, school administrators, pediatricians, and other
child care providers to identify and creatively solve local pedestrian
safety problems. Such coalitions should seek to enroll
non-traditional partners.
Recommendation #5
Conduct research to
address gaps in knowledge and to translate
research findings into effective programs and public
policy.
- Evaluate existing
childhood pedestrian safety programs by using
a systematic review process to determine which ones are effective
and deserve widespread replication. Such programs include:
- Educational
programs, such as Safe Routes to School, Walking
School Bus, Willie Whistle, Keep on Looking, and others
designed to reduce dart-outs and help children crossstreets safely.
- Traffic calming
strategies, such as roundabouts, speed humps,
and other measures.
- Enforcement
strategies, such as red light cameras and stricter
ticketing of drivers who illegally pass school buses.
- Where sufficient
data do not exist, use randomized controlled
trials where feasible to measure intervention effectiveness.
- Conduct research to
determine the cost effectiveness of promising
programs.
- Fund research that
links pedestrian safety to physical activity
and a healthier environment.
- Identify behavioral
indicators to help determine when a child
is ready to cross the street independently. Assess the chronologic
and developmental age, skill patterns, and teachable moments
when children are most receptive to interventions.
- Determine what level
of supervision children need at various levels
of cognitive, social, skill, and behavioral development. Establish
appropriate standards for such supervision.
- Develop, test, and
evaluate programs that use teens to mentor
young children in pedestrian safety.
Recommendation #6
Conduct surveillance to
measure children’s pedestrian injury rates, quantify
the amount of walking children normally do, and
identify risk factors for injury.
- Identify and
validate useful indirect measures that predict the occurrence of a
child pedestrian injury. Use these to monitor program effectiveness.
- Develop and test
community indicators of the prevalence of walking for
transportation, the public’s beliefs about the benefits and risks of
walking, and the existence of environmental and social risks of
walking.
- Define children’s
exposure to risk of pedestrian injury that includes, but is not
limited to, factors related to the time the child spends in the
street; traffic density, speed, and complexity; and road features such
as the number of lanes and existence of marked or signed
crosswalks. Develop and implement methods of collecting
data on such exposure.
- Develop local risk
factor surveillance systems to monitor how and why child
pedestrians are injured, and to identify the environmental and
behavioral modifications that could have prevented such injury.
Establish linkages to other data sources, particularly
emergency department data and police crash reports.
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