Janet Wang, Assistant Director of Health and Safety for Beth Israel Medical Center, listed exactly why our young children can’t make accurate judgements when it comes to traffic and exactly what we can teach them to be able to make smart decisions.
Raising children in NYC definitely has its perks; however, like many things, what has its ups also have its share of challenges. One of the key challenges of raising children in the City is street and pedestrian safety.
There’s no doubt that this is a concern for most parents who raise their children here because there’s plethora of different types of motored vehicles on every street corner on every block. Whether it’s a bus, a truck, a Black Car or a Yellow Cab, or during the warmer months, the bikes and motorcycles, the Vespas, and let’s not forget those “hybrid” make-shift motored bicycles that more and more delivery people are riding, and they all seem to have their own agenda which appears to be speed, speed and more speed. Being a Safety Director for a hospital, street safety isn’t necessary where my expertise lies so I did some research and here are some facts that I found that I’d like to share with you:
- Children are not small adults; developmentally, children cannot reliably judge speed and distance of moving vehicles until they are 10 years old.
- Children cannot accurately determine which direction a sound is coming from.
- More than half of child pedestrian fatalities occur at non-intersection locations.
- Toddlers are mostly injured by vehicles that are in reverse (backing up), and boys are more likely to be involved in pedestrian accidents than girls.
- According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, unintentional motor vehicle traffic injuries is the number one reason for injury deaths in the US for ages 5-9 and the number two reason for ages 1-4. (2010, NCHS National Vital Statistics System).
The purpose of sharing those facts isn’t to alarm you, although I can certainly understand why it could; the purpose is to inform you so that you can prevent possible future accidents. As I said before, my expertise isn’t in street and pedestrian safety but it is in preventing accidents. If you reread the fact from the NCHS carefully, you’ll see a very important key word, “unintentional.” In the world of safety, an unintentional injury can technically be prevented with the proper corrective measures in place. Not all unintentional injuries can be prevented, yet, some can. When corrective measures are properly placed, it can either mitigate or even help eliminate the identified risk(s). So, what are those corrective measures? Take a look…
- Children under 10 years old should not cross the street without an adult.
- Consider your child’s limitations and how it may impact their safety and address them. Do they have hearing or vision impairments or cognitive or judgment limitations?
- Talk to your children about street and pedestrian safety. Teach them the proper traffic signals and what each street sign and signal means and practice with them while walking together.
- Teach your children to look left, right and left again when crossing the streets and to only cross at designated crossings.
- Remind your children to make eye contact with drivers before crossing the street and to watch out for motored vehicles that are turning and backing up.
- Teach your children to put down any devices while walking in the streets and set a good example and model the same behavior. Put down your own devices and follow all traffic rules when walking or driving.
- Teach your child cycling hand signals and use them together. Here’s a great guide: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/dot_bikesmart_brochure.pdf
Janet Wang is the Assistant Director of Health and Safety for Beth Israel Medical Center. Janet is a highly experienced and educated safety professional, with years of experience specializing in safety assessment and risk reduction and management and emergency response and management.