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Children?s Traffic Safety: International Lessons for the UK attempts to identify goodpractice and innovation from other countries that could improve the traffic safety ofchildren in the UK. The key findings suggest that the UK has adopted good practicein a number of areas but that current practice needs strengthening. A morewidespread approach to modifying the environment is required in the UK toimprove the safety of children as pedestrians or bicyclists, and barriers toimplementation need to be overcome. Clearer guidelines are needed forimplementing low speed limits near schools and in identifying these areas asenforcement zones. In the UK there is a steep social gradient in child pedestrianfatalities and at present there is no routine monitoring of the socio-economic statusof all road traffic casualties. This data is needed to assess whether inequality targetsare being met. In terms of national profile, the UK does not compare favourablywith most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)countries in terms of income distribution, relative child poverty and the number ofchildren living in one parent families in which the burden of poverty is high.Tackling the causes and effects of these inequalities on safety must continue to be apriority. A greater understanding is needed of how some countries achieve highlevels of safety behaviour (such as wearing seat belts or bicycle helmets) comparedto others so that these strategies could be used in the UK. More research is requiredto understand why safety behaviour is not as good among older children comparedto younger children. More consideration should be given to the introduction oflegislation on driver responsibility for pedestrian accidents. There could be morenational support for promoting safe and sustainable travel to school by linking thesethemes with explicit and clear curriculum topics and by making safe travel to schoolan aspect of the school inspection process. In terms of monitoring policy, exposurebasedtargets could be derived for children for different age, gender and road-usergroups. This seems especially important given the UK has policy targets forincreasing the amount of walking and bicycling by children. In addition, targetscould be set for secondary safety behaviour, such as seat belt or bicycle helmetwearing. There are many examples of innovative advocacy and action researchapproaches involving children that could be readily transferred to the UK. Moreinformation about these approaches would be useful.

A survey of OECD member countries was carried out to provide high level data on a consistent basis to identify and account for current patterns of child road safety . This paper reports the findings relating to children, aged 0-14 years, as pedestrians. Key survey elements included analyses of fatality data, relationships between socio-economic, demographic factors and fatality rates, and a questionnaire based survey. League tables based on average child pedestrian fatality rates were constructed for each OECD member country participating in our questionnaire enabling identification of the top five countries with the lowest pedestrian fatality rate as Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland, Germany, and Denmark. Few countries had quantitative information about children’s travel and its absence means that assessments are difficult about children’s safety and the relative risks they face, especially as pedestrians. There are large variations in the amount of walking between countries and growing car use is becoming an issue in one third of OECD countries. The main findings from the questionnaire survey were that the majority of countries did not have information on high risk groups but of those that did, the cross cutting themes of socio-economic and ethnic minority groups, young children and urban areas were identified. Three characteristics distinguish top countries in the League table from those doing less well: a strong approach to the introduction of infrastructure measures for pedestrian safety, including low speed limits in residential areas; conducting road safety campaigns at least once a year; and having legislation which assumes driver responsibility in an accident involving a child pedestrian. Having compulsory road safety education for children aged 6-9 years was a characteristic shared by most countries, as was the promotion of child pedestrian education and training initiatives and the commissioning of research. However there is lower research activity in less well performing countries.