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Introduction Even though child bicyclists are highly vulnerable in traffic only few studies focused on providing child bicyclists with means to enhance their abilities to deal with the complexity of dynamic traffic situations. The current study therefore evaluated whether a brief hazard perception intervention might be effective to improve hazard perception skills in child bicyclists towards a level more comparable to adult bicyclists. Methods Eighty children of the fourth grade (9.03 ± 0.43 years; 34 girls) and forty-six adults (34.67 ± 14.25 years age; 24 woman) first performed a Hazard Perception test for bicyclists. Response rate, reaction times, first fixation, duration of the first fixation, dwell time and total number of fixations on the events were measured. Next, the children took part in the HP intervention in which video clips of dangerous traffic situations were presented. The intervention comprised two classroom sessions of one hour (1/week). A post-test was performed one day after and the retention-test three weeks after the intervention. Results Children responded to more covert hazards immediately after the intervention (p < 0.05), but did not improve their response rate for overt hazards. Reaction times for the covert hazards improved on the post-test (p < 0.001) compared to the pre-test but this effect was reduced on the retention test. There was no effect of the intervention for entry time of the first fixation but the duration of the first fixation increased for the covert hazards (p < 0.05). Children made fewer fixations on the event compared to adults (p < 0.001), except for the covert hazards on the retention-test. The training also increased the number of fixations for the overt hazards on the post-test (p < 0.001) and the retention-test (p < 0.001) but only increased on the retention test for the covert hazards (p < 0.001). Conclusion The results demonstrated that a brief intervention for training hazard perception skills in child bicyclists is able to improve children’s situation awareness and hazard perception for potential dangerous situations. The training, however, was too short to improve children to higher adult levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient processing of visual information is crucial to safe driving. Previous research has demonstrated that driving experience strongly affects attentional allocation, with large differences between novice and experienced drivers. Expanding on this, we explored the influence of non-driving experiences on attentional allocation by comparing drivers with and without cycling experience. Based on situation awareness field studies, we predicted cyclist-drivers would demonstrate superior performance. Participants were 42 experienced drivers (17 female, 25 male) aged 30–50 years ( M = 39.8): 20 drivers and 22 cyclist-drivers. The experiment used a change detection flicker task, in which participants must determine whether two alternating images are identical (change-absent) or differ in a single detail (change-present). The changed object was either a road sign, car, pedestrian, or bicycle. Change target significantly affected both accuracy and response time: all participants were slower and less accurate at detecting changes to road signs, compared with when the change was a moving road user (i.e., car, pedestrian, bicycle). Accuracy did not differ significantly between groups, but cyclist-drivers were significantly faster than drivers at identifying changes, with the effect being largest for bicycle and sign changes. The results suggest that cycling experience is associated with more efficient attentional processing for road scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging more children to bicycle would produce both environmental and health benefits, but bicycling accidents are a major source of injuries and fatalities among children. One reason for this may be children’s less developed hazard perception skills. We assume that children’s situation awareness could be trained with a computer based learning game, which should also improve their hazard perception skills. In this paper, we present a prototype for such a game and pilot it with 8–9 year old children. The game consisted of videos filmed from a bicyclist’s perspective. Using a touchscreen, the player's task was to point out targets early enough to gain points. The targets were either overt (other visible road users on a potentially conflicting course) or covert (occlusions, i.e. locations where other road users could suddenly emerge). If a target was missed or identified too late, the video was paused and feedback was given. The game was tested with 49 children from the 2nd grade of primary school (aged 8–9). 31 young adults (aged 22–34) played the game for comparison. The effect of the game on situation awareness was assessed with situation awareness tests in a crossover design. Similar videos were used in the tests as in the game, but instead of pointing out the targets while watching, the video was suddenly masked and participants were asked to locate all targets which had been present just before the masking, choosing among several possible locations. Their performance was analyzed using Signal Detection Theory and answer latencies. The game decreased answer latency and marginally changed response bias in a less conservative direction for both children and adults, but it did not significantly increase sensitivity for targets. Adults performed better in the tests and in the game, and it was possible to satisfactorily predict group membership based on the scores. Children found it especially difficult to find covert targets. Overall, the described version of the learning game cannot be regarded as an effective tool for situation awareness/hazard perception training, but ways to improve the game are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child bicyclists are at greater risk to get involved in a traffic accident. Although hazard perception tests between inexperienced and experienced car drivers revealed significant differences in perceptual-cognitive skills, a similar test for bicyclists is not yet existent. Therefore this study aimed to compare visual search patterns and reaction times of child bicyclists and adult bicyclists utilizing a hazard perception test for cyclists. Seventy-five children and forty-one adults were presented with eleven video clips filmed from the perspective of the bicyclist. The participants were required to press a response button whenever they detected a hazardous situation. Children were found to have significantly delayed reaction times and time until the first fixation on the latent covert hazards compared to adults. The inefficient visual search patterns in children may be attributed to an immature visual system. However, the finding that children fixated later on the hazards and only responded to the covert latent hazards when they became salient indicate difficulties with identifying possible hazards. Altogether, the findings of this study suggest that children’s situation awareness is dependent upon experience too, and not just maturation. Therefore, implications for training young bicyclists will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]