Strategies
1 - Enhance public awareness about the need to improve 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:
1. The interdependent relationship among personal health, safety,
community livability, and environmental protection;
2. Pedestrians as road users who, like motorists and bicyclists, need
to be safe in traffic;
3. The manner and degree to which engineering solutions can enhance
pedestrian safety (e.g., traffic calming, separation of pedestrians
from motor vehicle traffic, and better crosswalk controls);
4. The usefulness and cost-effectiveness of traffic law enforcement.
2 - Modify the behavior and attitudes of both pedestrians and drivers
to improve sharing the road.
1. 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.
2. Help the public understand the degree to which excessive speed
increases stopping distances and thus increases the risk of pedestrian
death.
3. 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.
4. 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 to teach their children age-appropriate pedestrian
safety rules.
3 - Modify the physical environment to better support pedestrian traffic.
1. At the national level:
a. Establish transportation policies that encourage local communities
to integrate pedestrian access and safety into every phase of transportation
planning.
b. 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.
c. Develop road construction standards that are more conducive to
safe walking.
d. Compile and disseminate local "best practices" that foster pedestrian
safety, especially those that emphasize the use of low-cost solutions
and new technologies.
e. 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.
2. At the state and local levels:
a. 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.
b. 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 modifying existing ones.
c. Encourage local officials, designers, and planners to enhance pedestrian
accessibility and safety when building or remodeling schools, recreational
sites, and businesses.
4 - Develop and conduct effective safe-walking programs.
1. Ensure that programs to prevent child pedestrian injuries receive
public and private support sufficient to provide programs in all states.
This may require corporate and Congressional champions and a national
spokesperson.
2. 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.
3. Encourage states to develop 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 through- out the state.
4. At the community level, create multidisciplinary 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 nontraditional partners.
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1. 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:
a. 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 cross streets safely.
b. Traffic-calming strategies, such as roundabouts, speed humps, and
other measures.
c. Enforcement strategies, such as red light cameras and stricter
ticketing of drivers who illegally pass school buses.
2. Where sufficient data do not exist, use randomized controlled trials
where feasible to measure intervention effectiveness.
3. Conduct research to determine the cost-effectiveness of promising
programs.
4. Fund research that links pedestrian safety to physical activity
and a healthier environment.
5. 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.
6. Determine what level of supervision children need at various stages
of cognitive, social, skill, and behavioral development. Establish
appropriate standards for such supervision.
7. Develop, test, and evaluate programs that use teens to mentor young
children in pedestrian safety.
6 - Conduct surveillance to measure children's pedestrian injury rates,
quantify the amount of walking children normally do, and identify
risk factors for injury.
1. Identify and validate useful indirect measures that predict the
occurrence of a child pedestrian injury. Use these to monitor program
effectiveness.
2. Develop and test indicators of the prevalence of walking for transportation,
the public's beliefs about the benefits and risks of walking, and
the existence of environ- mental and social risks of walking.
3. 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.
4. 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 injuries.
Establish linkages to other data sources, particularly emergency department
data and police crash reports.
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