Image: CAPT
Road Safety GB is encouraging road safety practitioners to complete a new survey designed to identify ‘promising practice’ in engaging with parents on child road safety.
The short survey is the first stage of a research project developed by University College London in collaboration with the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT), and funded by the Road Safety Trust.
The survey, aimed at road safety educators from local authorities across the UK, is setting out to identify effective road safety education initiatives for parents of children under the age of 11 years.
The researchers are particularly interested to hear about work with families from deprived backgrounds and ethnic minority communities, whose children are at greatest risk of death and serious injury on the roads.
Three projects will be selected from the survey for more in-depth evaluation, with practical manuals then developed for each.
Katrina Phillips, chief executive of CAPT, said: “Parents can be a real resource for road safety education. But road safety professionals tell us that engaging with parents can be difficult and this is a neglected area of practice. This research project will share what’s working well.”
Jeremy Phillips, Road Safety GB’s director of research, said: “Road Safety GB is delighted to be involved in this project.
“Many of our members will have road safety initiatives to share and all will recognise the value of generating, and supporting, parental enthusiasm in adding to the overall road safety experience of their children.
“As we seek to enlist the support of parents and others with a caring role in delivering road safety education directly to young children, it’s especially important that we can signpost them to initiatives and support materials with which we have confidence – and which come with an evidence base for effectiveness and usability.”
Click here to participate in the survey.
Category: Children.
Very enthused to see this. Was interested to be part of the discussion at conference about who “oversees” or “regulates” evaluations and keeps a central bank of what works. Can RSGB develop to fill this much needed, in my opinion, role. Not sure how it would work but worth investigating?
Nick, Lancashire
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It’s only an observation but it’s an interesting picture because it shows the adult shielding the child from any vision of oncoming traffic from the right and ability to learn from the adult’s actions. We know that the visual acuity to judge the speed of vehicles is based on its looming is dependant upon both cognitive skills and experience.
Whilst it is natural to keep your child on the left in order to protect them from traffic, maybe it is also protecting the child from learning about traffic.
I am sure that many RSPs have far greater understanding of the development of visual acuity skills than myself and would be interested in their opinions.
Rod King, Warrington – 20’s Plenty for Us
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