A new study by the University of Iowa found that younger kids have a harder time gauging exactly when it’s safe to cross the street.
This is not surprising, but it is a good reminder to neighborhoods that their job is to make it easy and safe for kids to walk around (as Safe Routes to School does) — not to say, “That’s why we have to drive them.”
Alas, America’s #1 parenting magazine, Parents, presented the study exactly the way you’d hope it would not: “Science Says Kids Shouldn’t Cross a Busy Street Solo Until They’re 14.”
My kids are 14 and 11, and I’m not gonna lie—I HATE the idea of them crossing streets alone. They’ve both done it, just not with me because it makes me a nervous wreck. I call it “street fear”—that moment when you’re waiting to cross a busy street and finally decide to step out into a gap in traffic and bolt across. I’m 47 and my heart still races every time. Not as much as it did when I was younger, but enough that I still grasp tightly to both of my kids’ hands.
Now science has just issued a pretty big strike against letting kids younger than 14 cross solo. According to a new study out of the University of Iowa, younger kiddos lack the perceptual judgment and physical skills needed to consistently get across safely.
Look, I’m a nervous wreck about street and cars, too, so I relate to this writer. But I am also a nervous wreck about reinforcing the prevailing myth of the day: That somehow this generation of kids cannot do what every generation of kids has done until now, and what kids today continue to do in many parts of the world. And while I know that there are more cars today, there are also better brakes and fewer built-in blindspots. So to suddenly declare no kids should cross the street till 14 is a radical restriction on everyone — kids AND their parents, now responsible for even more schlepping.
It’s not even what the Parents writer wished to say. She was more nuanced, ending her piece this way:
So what’s a child to do? One recommendation is for parents to teach their children to be patient and to encourage younger ones to choose gaps that are even larger than the gaps adults would choose for themselves, [researcher] O’Neal says. Also, civic planners can help by identifying places where children are likely to cross streets and make sure those intersections have a pedestrian-crossing aid.
Agreed! But when the media picks up a study like this, it’s generally, “Well that settles it: Never let your children do anything by themselves. Even things you did at a much younger age. Science says it’s unsafe.”
Crossing the street is never perfectly safe. I applaud measures taken to slow down cars, increase pedestrian visibility, and make it easier for everyone, including kids, to walk.
I do not applaud deciding that any danger to kids = no more freedom for kids, the prevailing message our society seems determined to extract from an imperfect world. – L.
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61 Comments
Yikes! Well, all the little four year olds that walk to kindergarten by themselves her in Switzerland must be dead. Oh, wait, they survive just fine.
One thing I’ve learned living in Switzerland where kids walk to school and lots of people (including me) depend on public transportation is that there are ALWAYS people out walking. That means that drivers are used to walkers. If you so much as look like you might be thinking about crossing at a crosswalk, the cars will stop for you.
The other day, I was walking behind 3 obnoxious teenage boys, complete with rebellion practically tattooed across their faces. The street was clear of traffic, and they could have safely crossed at any time, but they got to the crosswalk, looked both ways and crossed the street, just like they were taught in Kindergarten. Except for the cigarettes in their hands and the cuss words coming out of their mouths.
My theory is, more kids walking will make it safer for all walkers because drivers will expect them.
They’re invalidating my experience!
I can’t imagine what my 13 year-old self would have done if my mother insisted that I not cross the street by myself. Myself and a large number of classmates walked to Junior High School. Exactly zero were accompanied by a parent. The mocking that would have occurred were it to be the case would have been relentless.
And the magazine headline sounds like “science” is an independent entity, even a deity to be worshipped and obeyed unquestioningly. How very unscientific. LOL
She holds her fourteen-year-old’s hand?! Holding the eleven-year-old’s hand is bad enough, but fourteen? The teasing s/he (the kid) must get from peers has got to be far more damaging than the miniscule chance of something happening while crossing the street. Poor kid.
There’s a little park just over a block away from us where our 7 & 5 year old boys often go on their own. At this same park, a couple of weeks ago, a kid was hit by a car after darting into the street. We have not stopped letting our kids go, but we did re-emphasize street safety. Stay on the sidewalks, look both ways before crossing, stay together. These are not guarantees that it won’t happen to them, but if we keep repeating it and modeling good street safety when we’re all out together, it’ll decrease the chances. My 5-year-old still darts away sometimes in parking lots, even though I’m constantly reminding him about cars and inattentive drivers who may not see someone so small, but he’s getting better.
On the flipside, I think saying not until 14 is somewhat defeatist. Teaching our kids is a daily, micro-step at a time process. To say kids won’t get it till such and such an age makes me not want to bother, since it’s all wasted effort anyway. But I know that’s not true, and magazines like this shouldn’t be acting like it is.
I find this emphasis on kids turning a certain age before being able to do a certain activity is so useless. it boggles my mind that people don’t understand that it takes learning the skills that counts most, not what age the child is. I would rather see a 10-year-old who has learned the skills cross a street, than a 14-year-old who has not learned these skills, but is now crossing the street by virtue of turning 14 – it makes no sense!
It 14, cannot cross the street by themselves.
At 15, they can get a driver’s license.
Amazing. (insert eye roll)
My kids having been crossing streets by themselves since elementary school. This woman is overly paranoid if she is terrified to let her 11 and 14 year olds cross the street.
I think things like this have to be put in perspective. I am very comfortable with my 14 yr old crossing many streets but there are some streets I tell him to avoid because they are just too risky. When you live in a neighborhood, you get to know the streets that deserve more caution because of the way people come down them or just because of their location. I used to walk to school with my younger siblings at 10 yrs. old but there was a crossing guard on almost every corner.
I do believe that younger children are more likely to act on impulse and possibly dart across a street, trying to make it before the car gets there. They are kids.
Just like with driving and teens, I don’t think young children should be allowed to cross the street unless they have proven to be capable and are mature enough to obey the rules of the road and understand the consequences.
If science is saying that younger brains do not have the same ability to process certain things as slightly older brains, I get it.
I first read this (without my glasses) and thought it said, “Simon Says Kids Shouldn’t Cross….” and thought it was a game.
I have glasses on now and want to bang my head on my computer.
I vividly remember being shown a movie in high school that explained why children have trouble gauging the distance and speed of cars. . . but the point was to teach us to be extra careful as drivers anywhere that small children were present (or might be present), such as residential streets. As it should be! Would that some residents on my street had been shown the same movie.
Of course, urging drivers to be careful is of limited use. More practical would be to restructure streets and sidewalks as much as possible to facilitate safe walking. E.g., there’s no way to reach the front door of our public library on foot without crossing a trafficway of the parking lot that is set up in such a way that drivers don’t even slow down as they swing through. Restructuring to either avoid the need to cross, or to make the crossing more clearly a stretch of sidewalk that cars are crossing (rather than as a parking lot that walkers are crossing at their own risk) could be done quite easily, if the safety of pedestrians were any kind of priority.
But no, instead let’s say 14-year-olds shouldn’t walk to the library!
My town: Large trailer park on one side of 5 lane road. Library on the other. School district says kids within 2 miles of middle school (as the bird flies) MUST walk (or be transported by parents or take the transit bus.)
The town installed two cross walks so kids (and moms and others trying to get to the transit bus stops) could actually get there safely.
If the road is really busy, the required action is to not ban kids from crossing the street, it is to install adequate crosswalks. And that may be different in different locations. The college I went to had a number of dorms across the main road that went through town. Several students were hit by drivers who didn’t stop. Flashing signs were installed. Students still darted, and drivers didn’t stop. There is now a stop light at the crossing and things seem to be going better.
The part of the article that struck me was this: “that moment when you’re waiting to cross a busy street and finally decide to step out into a gap in traffic and bolt across. I’m 47 and my heart still races every time.”
She’s 47 and it scares the crap out of her to cross a busy street? I’m wondering if she had a bad experience crossing a street when she was young, or if she’s just an easily excitable person?
I’m 46 and I’ll admit that there are times when I’m walking where I encounter a busy road that is harrowing to cross. However, it’s nothing to get all stressed out about. I just wait until there is a large gap in traffic (sometimes this takes a while) and then walk across. General rule of thumb: if you have to “bolt” across, as the writer suggests, the gap isn’t large enough.
This article is the opposite of what was being taught to my kids in elementary school (circa late 90’s). Their teachers were telling them that they are pedestrians, and thus they have the right of way. The cars HAVE to stop for them and if a car hits them it’s the driver’s fault. This is all technically true, but you don’t tell that to a bunch of elementary school kids. I quickly re-educated them back to what I had taught them, explained that it doesn’t matter WHO was at fault if they are dead from being run over by a car, and then called the school about it. I still to this day don’t know what possessed the teachers to present this to the kids in a way that could be interpreted as “I can just walk or run out into traffic and I’m not at fault if I get hit.”
This article addresses crossing a road on a bicycle simulator, with a virtual wall of images as the input to determine street crossing abilities. This study does not address walking, the sensory input from the real world, and measures the development of a narrow and specific skill. This study does not contain any “new” information for parents. All parents are aware that predictive skills develop over time, and that older children are more likely to have better developed skills than younger. Below is a link to the actual study. After reading the study, I feel that the methodology is more appropriate as a tool to determine road design safety for people of varied skills and abilities. It does not address pedestrians crossing the street at all.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267048366_How_Do_Children_Perceive_and_Act_on_Dynamic_Affordances_in_Crossing_Traffic-Filled_Roads
Well first of all, there is no way a simulation is reliable. When we decide about crossing the street, we use most of our senses to know what’s happening in all directions for some distance. We improve in this not because of age, but because of experience.
Did they compare the % of kids being hit by simuated with the actual % of mobile kids being hit by actual cars? Because in real life, those statistics sound very high.
Also, many if not most of us live in places where crossing the street is a relatively low-risk activity due to low / modest traffic and good traffic control (signals etc.). I’m sure there are places where even I would get a little nervous crossing the street, but not anywhere in my county.
In my opinion the sensible thing to do is to watch your kids as they make street-crossing decisions, and decide what additional information / practice they need.
My kids are 10 but only recently discovered the fun of using their bikes for mobility. We live a couple miles from a fairly average “main street” which they have never crossed before. They asked me if they could bike to a store on the other side of that street. So, knowing my kids, I advised them about not only observing the traffic signals, but also being aware of their surroundings, as cars don’t always obey the signals or act predictably. They made it there and back alive. The above-mentioned “simulation” will not change my behavior in this regard.
My life experience suggests to me that there are two points at which we are most in danger from ordinary traffic… when we’re young enough to not know how dangerous it is, and then again later when we are old enough to seek out danger.
Toddlers get hit by cars because they don’t realize moving cars are dangerous. Early teens get hit by cars because they vastly overestimate their own abilities.
Then there’s a later bump, people that get hit by cars because they are intoxicated.
Walking to school wasn’t dangerous… until half the students started getting driven to school, creating a lot of traffic in areas ill-designed to handle it.
When I was 13yo I used to ride my bike about 5 miles on a state highway to get to a summer education program (and back of course). But I was still too young to cross a street I guess. 😛
I can only think of 2 kids who I knew in real life who were hit by cars. One was my oldest brother, then age 6, who apparently darted in front of a car. (He received a bruise and some better training about street crossing before being set loose again.) The other was a kindergarten child (who, by the way, was crossing correctly, at a protected cross walk with a school crossing guard. The maniac driver ran over her anyway.)
There is a part of Portland known as “Linnton”. It is sparsely populated, because it has the Willamette river on one side and forest park on the other side. The route to and through Linnton is U.S. 30, which continues on out of Portland and on to Astoria on the coast.. There is exactly one stoplight in Linnton.
What makes it relevant to the discussion at hand? It involves school bus stops. Every child must cross US 30 once per day, because the bus stops to go into the city are on one side, and the bus stops to be dropped off at are on the other side. There is only one safe place to cross. Many (older) children choose to cross the highway at other points, because walking down to the light and back takes them so much longer. This led to fairly predictable results.
One solution is to have the school buses make stops to pick up and drop off on both sides of the highway. Another solution is to change the speed limit on the highway to 25, all hours of the day. Guess which one they went with?
>>I find this emphasis on kids turning a certain age before being able to do a certain activity is so useless. it boggles my mind that people don’t understand that it takes learning the skills that counts most, not what age the child is. I would rather see a 10-year-old who has learned the skills cross a street, than a 14-year-old who has not learned these skills, but is now crossing the street by virtue of turning 14 — it makes no sense!<<
Okay, here's my proposed solution: Adults have to be 99 years old before they're allowed to mandate a minimum age for young people to do things.
So wait… They can’t cross without an adult at age 14 but they can learn to drive at 15? Has anyone stopped to think about the convergence of these things?
You do realize that kids can learn to fly at any age,
“The FAA states that an applicant for a student-pilot certificate must be at least 14 years old for the operation of a glider or balloon and 16 years old for other categories of aircraft. Many of us have heard of teenagers who soloed an airplane on their 16th birthday. These teenagers probably started flying years before they were eligible for a student-pilot certificate.
http://www.flyingmag.com/training/learn-fly/flight-school-age-limits-flying
As a flight instructor, I am often asked the question, “How old do you have to be to start learning to fly?” Teens ask this question thinking that they will hear the 15 1/2 years old that is required by the State of Ohio to get a temporary permit in a car. Parents of younger children ask this question in some cases hoping that they can get an enthusiastic youth off of their back, in other cases because they would like to get their child up and flying.
The short answer to the question is that there is no minimum age for a child to begin learning to fly. The longer answer is a bit more complicated and I will attempt to discuss that here.
…As the kids start to get older, I think that actual flight lessons on the control of the aircraft in flight can be great. These types of lessons should only be done on days with excellent weather conditions. The goal is not to teach them everything that there is to know about flying but to give them confidence in their ability to handle the airplane in flight. Depending on their size, the instructor may have to handle all of the ground operations as they may not be able to reach the pedals
http://studentpilotnews.com/2013/08/26/flying-for-the-young/
we also don’t teach street-crossing skills like they did back in the 90s.
Okay, professional scientist here. Paleontology/geology, but the principles are transferable.
First, never believe a single study. This is particularly true when it comes to biology, which is a series of exceptions with just enough rules to hold it together. Location, education, the amount of outdoor activity, and a myriad of other factors will easily confound these findings. Not “can”, but WILL. This makes applying this sort of thing notoriously difficult in the social sciences, and renders these studies absolutely without value to individuals. The average is meaningless to individuals; confounding factors play merry havoc with such things.
Second, the conclusions vastly overstepped what the data support. If anything (and remember, given the variance I’m not convinced it IS anything), this data merely supports the notion that our kids should exercise more caution than they think they should when crossing streets–in other words, that our kids are inexperienced and that leads to flawed conclusions. Which is, well, part of being a kid.
Third, how precisely do these people expect children to learn the skill of estimating how big a gap they need? It IS a skill, and refusing to allow them to practice it will necessarily prevent them from learning it. No, holding Mommy or Daddy’s hand is insufficient–that’s fine when you’re 3 (and even then I give my kid more leeway than my wife likes!), but at 14 you should be learning from experience! While I am certainly not an expert (fossils don’t provide much data on behavior), my take on this is that any study ostensibly relating to cognition of children that doesn’t include this issue is fatally flawed.
That’s without getting into the additional fatal flaws old school points out. Even if we assume this study was done perfectly, it STILL would be of no use to parents and be so flawed that its utility to researchers would be practically nil.
This isn’t science. It’s a flagrant abuse of science, one that is not only deeply insulting to me (and should be to every other scientist who hears about it), but one that further degrades the apparent value of science in our culture.
>>we also don’t teach street-crossing skills like they did back in the 90s.<<
Actually, Backroads, I just found this, and while it's an Australian resource, it's accessible to anyone, and it looks pretty recent:
https://www.safetytown.com.au/
I think they still do “safety town” in my area. And I certainly taught my kids how to cross a street, starting on cul-de-sacs when they were tots.
1965: I nearly got hit, and was chewed out by a policeman when I tried to cross a busy city street at 17 – we had just moved into the city from the country and I wasn’t used to multilane traffic. But I gre up to be a road ecologist, and have to worry about traffic (and the potential for silent electric cars) every minute of doing that work.
” younger kiddos lack the perceptual judgment and physical skills needed to consistently get across safely.”
This — THIS — is what results from not growing up playing “Frogger.”
“She’s 47 and it scares the crap out of her to cross a busy street? I’m wondering if she had a bad experience crossing a street when she was young, or if she’s just an easily excitable person?”
I’ve been on streets like this. In college the parking was on one side of the street, the dorms on the other. A bunch of college kids driving to their parking spaces, and bunch of college kids trying to get to the dorms–it was a nightmare at the best of times. Add any sporting event, and it was nearly impossible. We referred to it as “playing Frogger” (yeah, yeah, we were nerds! 😀 ). Then as an adult I’ve lived in SoCal, where there’s no such thing as a road with light traffic. On some job sites I’ve been on traffic has been so bad that police have put up barricades at certain times of the day.
But while I can understand it, these are by FAR the exception!
The key is setting rules appropriate for the child’s development level. Kids under 10 aren’t ready to cross in traffic – their depth perception and peripheral vision haven’t developed enough yet.
In all seriousness, looking at this “study” shows it was a bunch of grad students who programmed a Virtual Reality “street” and were surprised when kids reached out to touch the non-existent cars.
How surprising.
Give me a Holodeck and I guarantee I’ll get killed a few times exploring the limits of the environment and fondling the flora. James is right. This is not science. It’s a joke.
@Old School–My thoughts exactly. The methodology is more to inform street design than impede children. But the headline is designed to get PR, not to be helpful.
Study Reveals Considerations for Street Design to Integrate Pedestrian and Vehicular Traffic doesn’t get Chicken Littles panties in a wad, and that’s what this is all about.
I’m much more worried here in NYC about the number of people I see step out into a street against a light, with their faces in a screen. But I don’t get too terribly upset. They’re adults. And, Darwin.
That study is laughable to say the least. My son had to change schools starting in Grade 7. He was 12 years old. He had to walk a good distance; 25 minutes walking fast. He had to cross the busiest intersection in our town which had street lights. I was terrified at the time as there had been (and since) many accidents due to cars blowing the lights. We did a few ‘trial runs’ about safety, watching for traffic … even though he was the pedestrian crossing on the light with right of way but still needed to be vigilant about watching for errant cars turning, speeding etc. Guess what? Never got hit. He managed just fine and I was NEVER with him once on these walks to school. Add to this he had a sketchy few blocks to walk through also and none of those so-called sketchy homes with sketchy characters in them ever bothered him. I guess the ‘scientists’ that did this bogus study were never kids who crossed streets to get to school? Maybe they always took a bus !!! LOL
There’s no indication in either of the articles I read about this study that there was any sort of controlling for how much experience a child had crossing the street, or how much they had been taught about pedestrian safety. Were the 14-year-olds better equipped to cross streets because they were 14, or because they had more years of instruction and/or experience at crossing streets? How does an 8-year-old with lots of experience stack up against a 14-year-old who had his hand held until the day of his 14th birthday?
I have a few observations. Number one, the video that shows what the simulation is like looks nothing like real life to me. I know the write-up said this was done in a 3-D lab, but even with that added, I can’t imagine that the simulation, based on that video, truly mimics a real life situation, which throws the applicability of the entire study into question.
Number two, the biggest gap between cars, according to the article, was five seconds, and it sounds like that is when the kids were supposed to safely cross. Um, five seconds is not long enough in my book, and if we are giving kids a bad rap for not judging well between a three second gap and a five second gap, I don’t think too highly of this study. In real life, when my kids cross a busy street twice a day to get to and from our bus stop, they are looking for a much bigger gap than five seconds, and children are perfectly capable of doing this (mine are seven and nine).
Finally, if the children in the study were randomly selected, then they are going to have some kids who have zero training on how to cross a street, and yes, I expect they will do poorly. I wonder, if the study was done only with kids who have training on how to cross a street, if the results would be different. It would have been interesting if they had studied if the kids had been teachable–if they improved with training and instructions.
I hate to say it, but Parenting’s headline was about par for the press – it was intended to grab your attention, accuracy be damned. I read the synopsis of the study, and they made no such recommendation. Also, the study doesn’t factor in the use of crosswalks, and the fact that most states require vehicles to stop for pedestrians. I would also question the use of 3D virtual reality standing in for the real thing. It might have looked convincing, but did it exactly mimic the aural-visual cues of a real street?
There’s also the issue of teaching. As a parent (my parents did the same) I taught my son to cross safely from the time he could walk. Of course, I didn’t let him do it on his own until he was about 5, but I wanted good crossing habits to be well-ingrained. He’s doing the same with his daughters, now 4 and 6. The six year old is very good about crossing streets, and the four year old is catching on fast.
If you want to know what “science says” about this question, there is a way. Do a large-scale study of thousands (at least) of 13-year-olds who have crossed busy streets, and see what percentage of them got harmed. My guess is (unless you increase your study to literally millions) the answer will be “none of them.” There’s some science.
Lol! That’s probably because the kids they tested, were probably inept. Due to them not being taught at an early age. Basically, they don’t know because they’ve never learned (young). Let’s use the woman in the article as an example. With her childhood fear growing into adulthood fear, the very same fear has probably prevented her from teaching her kids how to cross the street safely.
I’ve seen kids as young as 4 years old training in martial arts, many are awkward and a little clumsy. But the ones that have been training regularly for a year, have very good timing, spacial awareness, agility, and perception. But that’s constant training. So age isn’t a factor, it’s the training. Training of their mind. Like I always say, teach them young. Children’s brains are primed for learning. Don’t ever avoid it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes YOU feel. It’s not about YOU. It’s about what’s best for the kids as they grow up.
@Vicki Bradley: Bingo! Teach them young. Makes it easier to teach them when their older when they already have a good base.
@James Pollock: “One solution is to have the school buses make stops to pick up and drop off on both sides of the highway. Another solution is to change the speed limit on the highway to 25, all hours of the day. Guess which one they went with?”
Again, it always seems to point to “what is best for the adults”. This mentality of many is what is ruining children and their childhood. smh
Young children, and I mean, YOUNG children, most being school children AND street children, over in India, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines cross very busy streets inundated with motorbikes, all the time without incident. Yes, a few probably get hit and killed but a far majority of these kids are able to navigate their way across very busy streets where the driving is bad.
“This — THIS — is what results from not growing up playing “Frogger.”
I wanted to say that if your 14 year-old treats intersection crossing like a game of Frogger and darts into traffic, you have bigger fish to fry.
I almost wish there was a pedestrian course taught at schools to teach basic safety for walking and biking. From the tone of the article, it sounds to be a skill set that is not being taught as a basic childhood skill and instead parents think safety is driving everywhere or holding their hand. There has to be a better way.
I have a 14 year-old daughter. She would DIE if I tried to walk her across the street. Even me telling thinking about doing this, I can feel her eyes rolling… While she may be impulsive at passing the ball in soccer, she has not been when crossing the street. I rode bikes and walked with her to school until she got it down and she probably crosses the street better than most adults.
The most important thing to teach children is that they should never assume that someone sees them and to stop, look, and listen before crossing any road. Often times, if it’s a speeding car, they can hear it before they see it. That not all motorists obey crosswalks and it’s better to wait for the best time to cross and not to rush. Arriving in one piece and not a pancake, that kind of thing.
Lastly, I think distracted adults not following the above suggestions should be a bigger target for such *studies* as I see more of these folks getting hit by cars while on the phone than small children with cat-like reflexes and good pedestrian skills.
Isn’t this pretty much old news? We have this strict liability law that driver’s insurance has to pay for 100% of the damage if said driver hits a cyclist or pedestrian under the age of, indeed, 14 (as opposed to at least 50% if the cyclist or pedestrian is 14+), unless the driver can proof the child caused the accident deliberately, which is rarely the case.
Also, if even adults have to wait for a traffic gap and bolt across, I’d say it sounds like that road isn’t pedestrian-friendly enough in the first place. If children (not too many years) under 14 have trouble crossing it, then so do old people and plenty of others.
@Emily: “Adults have to be 99 years old before they’re allowed to mandate a minimum age for young people to do things.”
Can we at least exclude the ones with dementia from voting?
“The key is setting rules appropriate for the child’s development level. Kids under 10 aren’t ready to cross in traffic — their depth perception and peripheral vision haven’t developed enough yet.”
Say what??!
All of my kids have commuted to school, with 3 road crossings, since kindergarten. Children can actually be taught and are ready to learn basic safety in preschool. Children develop skills by practicing them, not being deterred because of ridiculous age-based assumptions. It depends on the kid. I know adults who don’t have depth and peripheral vision developed. It won’t develop if you don’t practice it.
“… it makes me a nervous wreck. I call it “street fear”—that moment when you’re waiting to cross a busy street and finally decide to step out into a gap in traffic and bolt across. I’m 47 and my heart still races every time.”
Sounds like mom needs to face her own neurotic fear before imparting it onto her own children. The best way to conquer a fear is to face it. Get walking around. Some places are very pedestrian friendly. Others, not so much. Crossing a 6 lane highway? Not something I would really want to do. But a basic intersection? Relax, take your time, and pay attention. This really isn’t rocket science. It’s crossing a road.
Suzanne,
Your observation that increased pedestrian traffic decreases pedestrian accidents is exactly right.
Studies have shown (see _The Invisible Gorilla_ for references) that the more motorcycle and pedestrian traffic there is, the fewer accidents involving them there are, specifically because car drivers expect them to be on the road.
@James “Third, how precisely do these people expect children to learn the skill of estimating how big a gap they need?”
This is how: “If there are places where kids are highly likely to cross the road, because it’s the most efficient route to school, for example, and traffic doesn’t stop there, it would be wise to have crosswalks,” Plumert says.
This is how according to another researcher: One recommendation is for parents to teach their children to be patient and to encourage younger ones to choose gaps that are even larger than the gaps adults would choose for themselves, O’Neal says.
“Even if we assume this study was done perfectly, it STILL would be of no use to parents and be so flawed that its utility to researchers would be practically nil.”
According to article, scientists goal was to investigate the mechanism behind higher child accidents. What exactly it is that makes kids more likely to be hit by car. They were not trying to write parenting book.
“This isn’t science. It’s a flagrant abuse of science, one that is not only deeply insulting to me (and should be to every other scientist who hears about it), but one that further degrades the apparent value of science in our culture.”
There is a science, there is a journalism and they ain’t the same thing. As a scientist, you should know the difference. Some parents and journalists using the study to feed their confirmation bias should have no bearing on the original scientists who did the study.
Not distinguishing between science and journalist commentary degrades the apparent value of science in our culture too.
A general observation not limited to this story is that too often flawed and limited studies or simply mis-representing peer-reviewed ones are presented in sensational articles. People like stories over just the facts which cheapens the hard work by researchers in any field.
One dilemma facing smart people trying to explain complex issues is not knowing how much someone knows so they can avoid talking down to the public or if an individual lacks basic knowledge to understand the answer an expert may provide.
Scientists are getting to the point of getting out of their labs and be more vocal about the benefits of their hard work.
“The key is setting rules appropriate for the child’s development level. Kids under 10 aren’t ready to cross in traffic — their depth perception and peripheral vision haven’t developed enough yet.”
My depth perception didn’t develop until I was 12–it took years of therapy to get my brain to register the data from two eyes. To this day if I get tired, or experience eye strain, or get distracted, or any number of issues I revert back to bas-relief. I’m in my early 30s. Am I ready to cross a busy street?
By 10 kids without depth perception have developed coping mechanisms that are so deeply engrained that they don’t realize they ARE coping mechanisms. It’s like how you don’t think about shifting your balance when you walk–you just do it, on such a deep subconscious level that you aren’t aware of doing it. The ones who DO have good depth perception may not have it fully developed, but they certainly have sufficient experience in 3D navigation that they can determine if the cars are far enough apart (maybe not the number of seconds, but definitely on the “can I get across and live?” scale).
I was in kindergarten during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Grown-ups didn’t have time or energy or the inclination to treat children like hot-house plants.
We kids looked both ways before crossing. Like children in Switzerland today.
Teach your children well. Then set them free.
test:
“Not distinguishing between science and journalist commentary degrades the apparent value of science in our culture too.”
I’ll take some blame here–I wasn’t clear about when I was talking about the article and the response to it, vs. talking about the research itself (which is deeply, deeply flawed, for the reasons I stated and which you didn’t respond to). You are correct in that journalism and science are two very different fields, and that what journalists do with research usually doesn’t reflect the researchers.
THAT SAID, I was pretty clear in my criticisms, and you very clearly missed most of what I said. You pulled a small quote or two out of context and are making some very serious–and unwarranted–accusations.
“According to article, scientists goal was to investigate the mechanism behind higher child accidents. What exactly it is that makes kids more likely to be hit by car. They were not trying to write parenting book.”
The fact that someone thinks they can differentiate between the two demonstrates a failure to understand “confounding factors”. I would expect it of an undergrad–a particularly low-ranking undergrad–but not a grad student. We’re dealing with CHILD DEVELOPMENT; even if they’re only looking at traffic patterns, it’s dealing with children and cognition, which necessarily involves that field.
@NY Mom You need to factor in difference in law – according to Swiss law, the person in control of a vehicle is liable for damage caused as a result of the car being ‘in operation’, regardless of the question of who is at fault. The person in control of the car is not liable if he can prove that the accident was caused as a result of force majeure or circumstances that can be imputed to the victim or a third party.
The result is that people in Switzerland drive a bit differently then say people in China.
I don’t think Second World War is a good example. People were killing each other, people were deporting each other to death, people were stealing from each other and people were basically dying of hunger and cold – including children. Traffic might have been seen less of a danger for a kid compared to other risks (depending where the kid lived and what nationality it was) and parents often had no choice, but that should not make it was some gold standard for anything. Us being less used to dead is a good thing, generally speaking.
@James There is nothing wrong with doing partial studies that set up repeated model situation and measure specific skill involved. The article closest to study and quotes from researchers were both careful in what they conclude and recommend. Neither pretended to provide some kind of overall description of everything involved in traffic crossing. They measured only very specific situation and were very clear about it.
They found difference in performance in that specific situation which depended on age.
They were not looking at traffic patterns at all. They measured how fast the kid crosses the street and separately measured how accurately kids estimate distance between cars (and consider it safe in simulated environment). That is it. That is exactly what they reported. There is nothing wrong with making limited reproducible studies, as long as your conclusions are clear and limited.
14 years old guessed distances right all the time, 6 years old guessed distances in 8% cases. That is the child development factor in play. However, both ages crossed the street as fast as adults (meaning it is not children being slower when crossing which causes accidents).
They had 100 children available making it rather small study and nobody seems to pretend otherwise. The first author was graduate student, so it is rather weird to expect him/her to make huge multifaceted study.
Correction, that should be: 14 years old guessed distances right all the time, 6 years old guessed distances wrong in 8% cases (and right in 92% of cases).
Safety is used for many things other than ‘Safe’.
1. Safety is used to say, “Do what I say now! End of discussion”. ‘Danger’ has become a trump card. ‘Danger’ can be substituted for, ‘because I said so that’s why’! A toddler may complain about having to eat his green beans and asks, “WHY DO I HAVE TO EAT THEM”? The parent can respond with “BECAUSE I SAID SO THAT’S WHY”! However, an adult can’t say this to another adult. They instead say, “I’M RIGHT BECAUSE MY WAY IS SAFER”, or “WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS DANGEROUS”!
2. Safety can be used as a puppet string. Police and CPS are required to respond to any tip, complaint, whim, or nervous feeling that any busybody may have. The busybody can also use it to feel superior. (see safety use #3)
3. Safety is used to bully. This overlaps with the ‘puppet string’ and that a person can use it to harass another. However, there are many other areas as well. The workforce is a place where safety is a tool that can be used to bully. Everybody is given cart blanch to ‘snitch’ on anybody. Reporting another for engaging in a dangerous act is what this ‘cart blanch’ is meant for. However, this is often abused. The ‘dangerous’ act can be exaggerated, taken out of context, or completely made up.
4. Safety is used to sell. Remember the days when the type of toothpaste or dandruff shampoo determined whether or not you got a date? The word ‘Safety’ is attached to many products.
5. Safety is used for funding. This runs parallel to ‘Safety Sells’. A new study by the University of Iowa found that younger kids have a harder time gauging exactly when it’s safe to cross the street. It’s true that the peripheral vision and ability to determine speed, distance, and time are more developed in the later years. However, this would make a boring title of a study. It’s more of an attention grabber to say that it’s dangerous to……….
6. Safety is used to make things safer. However, this is way down the list.
The moral of the story, safety is used for many more things other than to make things safer.
Given I was taking a four hour round trip train ride by myself twice a month when I was 9, this idea astonishes me. I was crossing streets at 7. Also at age 9 I flew cross country by myself for the first time. And kids in the city which I wasn’t) tended to do all of these things at a young age. 11 seems way too old to be addressing this and 14 is absurd.
I agree with Suzanne (all the way at the top!). It is something I’ve noticed over the many years I’ve been both a pedestrian and a driver.
Back when I was a child in the 70s and 80s, drivers would often defer to pedestrians – not least because it was actually the law: our road rules in NSW (Australia) stated that pedestrians had right of way on all roads. In practice, this meant simply that, if there was a pedestrian waiting to cross at an intersection where cars were required to give way, the car would give way to the pedestrian first, then move forward to the intersection to see what traffic was coming. These days, it IS more cut-throat for pedestrians, as either drivers are unaware of the rule, or it doesn’t exist any more.
The problem is only going to get worse, as young people will never have been pedestrians before becoming drivers. There’s nothing like having been a pedestrian to make you aware of pedestrians when you drive!
The good news is that more and more cars are being equipped with auto braking technology that senses pedestrians. As time progresses, we should expect that to be in most new cars.
When I was nine I routinely walked about half mile through my neighborhood before crossing a two-lane busy street to get to my friend’s neighborhood. Oh my!
I crossed a “main street” in a big city every day beginning in Kindergarten. Although I was often “crossed” by a guard or an older sibling, many times I was alone when I crossed the street. By age 7 there wasn’t even a question of being old enough.
Can’t say I never did anything stupid, but it wasn’t because I was incapable of judging traffic. It was more because I blew off the dangers at times. Still, apparently not to the extent that I ever got hit or even close to it.
I’m reminded of an opening scene in “Young Victoria”, in which the the to-be-queen (played brilliantly by Emily Blunt) is not allowed to walk down stairs by herself until age 21(?), lest she injure herself. Ridiculous.
Horrible interpretation by the editors of Parents. The study didn’t say that at all. It’s ironic that this comes at a time when scientists are marching in this country to promote acceptance of science and scientific thinking. The study does help confirm what most people think, however, and studies like this are important to give city planners information they need to make streets pedestrian friendly. It would be interesting to see the failure rate for different speeds. And at marginally higher speeds the results of accidents are much more likely to result in more serious injuries.
Hmm – do you have the Green Cross Code or something equivalent?
http://think.direct.gov.uk/education/early-years-and-primary/parents/7-to-11s/the-green-cross-code/
Find a safe place to cross.
Stop, look and listen.
Let traffic pass.
Cross when safe to do so, keeping a lookout.
And for those mentioning a “Frogger” deficit, you might want to look for “Crossy Road”.
What happened to letting your kids judge when they were ready? I remember telling my parents to let go of my hand and I would walk across the road beside them. Then I let them know when I was ready to cross on my own.
Why are you teaching kids safety if you do not plan to let them practice what you preach?
I agree this idea that all kids are exactly the same (and all living in a major city within heavy traffic), and that all should be prohibited from doing things is ridiculous. At 14 years old the teen is one year away from getting their drivers permit. Are you telling me they can’t walk across a road yet? They should be well versed in pedestrian rules.
Ahhhhhhh!! I’m off to read more about the growing list of schools attempting to ban teenage students from watching 13 Reasons Why because it “glorifies suicide” and will cause teens to commit copycat suicide wn masse, just as sad rock songs did in the 1980s (NOT!!).