Traffic Education of Children 4-12 Years Old
SWOV Fact Sheet
Source: SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research
What must children learn to ultimately become safe road users? And how can this best be taught? To answer these questions the effects of various traffic education programmes were studied. Both formal education programmes at schools and especially the education parents give their children were assessed. A number of assessed programmes showed small improvement in behaviour whereas not one programme had a negative effect. It is remarkable that two programmes apparently using the same approach had a very different effectiveness. This fact sheet is largely based on a recent literature study covering the 1995-2005 period (Dragutinovic & Twisk, 2006) and the recent EVEO study in which eleven education programmes were assessed, four of which focussed on primary school pupils (Twisk et al., 2006). This fact sheet does not deal with the question of which requirements traffic education programmes should meet. This is discussed in the SWOV fact sheet entitled Content and assessment of traffic education programmes. Child road safety is indirectly dealt with. For more details on this subject readers are referred to our fact sheet entitled Road safety of children in the Netherlands.
