Press releases |
24 February 2011 |
|
Important role for parents in children learning safe traffic behaviour |
|
Parents believe they have an important role in teaching their children safe traffic behaviour. Most parents are convinced that they are in an excellent position to familiarize their children with traffic. This is a conclusion in the report The role of parents in informal traffic education, published by the Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV. A second finding in the study is that the child's age is an important factor in how they participate in traffic (bicycle, walking) and in how parents assist their child in traffic. Young children, for example, receive more active guidance from their parents than older children. Parents can benefit from information about the ways children learn most. The SWOV study indicates that the majority of parents do not feel the need for information about this subject and that they have competitive concerns other than road safety. Matters like the mental, physical, and social well-being, healthy nutrition, and the child's school performance receive more attention. Although most parents believe that they possess sufficient knowledge and means to satisfactorily fill their role, they appear to be most confident about giving verbal explanation and information. They have far less faith in educational methods that are known to be very effective, like learning by observation, copying others, and by simulation programmes on the computer. At present, parents mainly seem to pay attention to whether or not their child commits an error and to correct it if this is the case. SWOV advises stimulating parents to adopt a more proactive form of guidance. This can be done by taking the initiative to explain, showing how things must be done, and rewarding correct behaviour. It would also be sensible to emphasize the relation between road safety and other concerns. Finally, researchers considers it wise if parents start accompanying their children in traffic at a young age and begin informing them about safe traffic behaviour; the study indicates that the parents become less interested in suggestions and information about familiarizing their child(ren) with traffic as the child becomes older. For the study, SWOV used a survey among 585 parents to ask them how they take part in traffic, how they assess their child's skills, how they rate traffic safety of the route from home to school, and to ask them about the ways they actively accompany their children in traffic. SWOV report R-2010-31 The role of parents in informal traffic education is available in pdf. The report is in Dutch, but it has an English summary. |
|
Enquiries: SWOV, Information and Communication Han Tonnon, (070) 317 33 15, 06-11 53 29 15 Patrick Rugebregt, (070) 317 33 18 E-mail: persvoorlichting@swov.nl |
|