아동교통안전 기준 개발에 관한 연구 = The study on standard development for children traffic safety

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper outline some of the current patterns of accidents to child ped strians, examines the accident risk associated with this group of road users, and looks at some of the reasons why such accidents are occurring. Potential solutions which could be used by policy makers to resolve such problems are discussed and the implications of these on the children, their families and other road users are considered.
While the distribution of accidents throughout the day is related to the distribution of times at which children make most use of the roads, the use of exposure alone is not sufficient to explain all of the variation in accidents, in particular the afternoon peak on weekdays.
The majority of child pedestrian casualties occur on urban roads and a large proportion occur very close to the home of the child involved.
Over the years many different methods have been developed to improve road safety teaching techniques, and studies have been undertaken, with varying results, to try to assess the effectiveness of these techniques. In general it is true to say that there has been a general progression over the years from in-class lectures and talks of a largely theoretical nature to more practical skills based learning techniques focused around real life situations.
It was felt that there were a number of factors which impede the further development of road safety education in schools. These include:
- Organisational strucrure
- Professional preparation of teachers
- Assistance from external sources
- Existence and availability of road safety teaching materials
For any given location these probably have the most potential for reducing the numbers of accidents, though it has to be borne in mind that such measures are often expensive and the number of locations which can be treated in such a way are limited. A lot of work is currently focusing around ways of reducing vehicle speeds, particularly in residential areas where large numbers of children are likely to be encountered.
Traffic calming schemes are now becoming quite common in a number of European countries, and parts of the residential road network are now being slowly clawed back for use by pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorised vehicles. Particular locations where it would be worth while focusing such traffic calming measures would be outside schools where large numbers of children must use the roads by necessity and where accident risk has been shown to be high. Such measures need not operate full time, but given our increasingly technology orientated road environment it should be possible to create means of calming traffic in an area surrounding a school for the periods of the day when there is greatest need. Currently variable speed limit signs are being used in a number of locations near to schools.
Already there are large numbers of engineering schemes which are helping to substantially reduce the numbers of accidents to all road user groups in certain locations. Nowadays, a lot of emphasis is being placed upon speed reducing measures, especially in residential areas. What seems to be lacking from this coordinated approach is any attempts to change driver behaviour, other than through engineering means.