Pedestrian Safety - It’s Up To All of Us

Parents – Keeping Your Children Safe On The Street

The streets in our neighborhoods should be safe places for children to walk. But many kids face traffic dangers just because they’re walking to school or to the park.

Whether walking to a friend’s house, to school or around town, children need to know how to navigate streets safely. Pedestrian injury remains the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death among children ages 5 to 14.

The maturity level of a child under 10 years of age makes him or her less able to correctly gauge road dangers and renders him or her at greater risk for injury and death. Drivers, parents and kids can all do their part to help keep our streets safe for child pedestrians.

When, Where and How Injuries Happen

• Other than in the street, driveways, parking lots and sidewalks are the locations where young children under 3 years of age suffer the highest number of injuries as pedestrians.
• Almost 50 percent of nonfatal back-over injuries among children ages 1 to 14 occur at home.
• Seventy-four percent of child pedestrian deaths occur at non-intersection locations.
• Forty-two percent of child pedestrian deaths occur between 4 p.m. and 7:59 p.m.
• Children in low-income, densely populated, urban residential areas are at a substantially higher risk of pedestrian-related injury.
• From 1969 to current, the percentage of children walking to school dropped from approximately 50 percent to 13 percent. Part of the decline in pedestrian injuries could be a result of the drastic reduction in children walking to school.

Who Is Affected

• In 2009, almost two-thirds of childhood pedestrian-related deaths occurred to males.
• Children in lower-income neighborhoods were 3.5 to 5.7 times more likely to be injured as pedestrians than children in other neighborhoods.
• Four out of five driveway-related incidents occur to children ages 4 and under.
• Parents of children who suffer from a pedestrian-related injury are three times less likely to practice other preventive behaviors and are more likely to be single parents, young mothers or both