An examination of child pedestrian safety: Crossing behaviors, road environment, and rule compliance near parks in Montreal, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the past decades, physical activity of children has declined due to many reasons, such as unsafe roads, which can negatively influence parents’ attitudes toward allowing their children to spend time outdoors. Urban parks, as natural and outdoor places, can promote children’s physical activity and psychological health. However, child pedestrians' safety on roads next to parks has not been fully investigated. In order to fill this research gap, this study examines child pedestrians' safety considering four rule compliance measures: temporal, spatial and velocity compliance and visual search. \nWe employed a naturalistic approach to observe behaviors, road environment, and car interaction while children were crossing roads near parks. In this study, street crossings of 731 children were observed at 17 crosswalks around four parks in Montreal, Canada in the summer of 2017. Then, Chi-square tests were used to verify if the individual, situational, behavioral, and road environment characteristics are significantly associated with rules compliance. These characteristics were explored through mixed-effect logistic regression with the same set of independent variables. \nOur results showed that parental close supervision, stopping at the curb before crossing, and the pedestrian countdown display had positive association with rule compliance. Moreover, about 50% of children started crossing at the same time as the adult companion. In the remaining group, more rule violations were observed when the adult initiated the crossing. As for effects of vehicles interacting with child pedestrians, a mixed impact on four rule compliance was observed: more spatial compliance and visual search, but less temporal and velocity compliance. \nThe current study outcomes can be used to provide safer road environment near urban parks. In this regard, longer crossing signal and pedestrian countdown display at traffic lights are quite advantageous. L'activité physique des enfants a diminué dans la dernière décennie pour de nombreuses raisons, notamment les routes dangereuses qui empêchent les parents de laisser leurs enfants jouer à l’extérieur. En parallèle, nous savons que les parcs urbains peuvent promouvoir l’activité physique et la santé mentale des enfants. Pourtant, peu de travaux de recherche se sont intéressés à la sécurité routière des enfants piétons à proximité des parcs. C’est pourquoi la présente étude examine leur sécurité en tenant compte de la conformité aux règles relatives aux piétons. \nL’approche naturaliste a été adoptée afin d’observer les comportements des enfants, l'environnement routier et les interactions avec les voitures durant la traversée. Les tests Khi-deux ont été réalisés pour mettre en évidence les caractéristiques individuelles, situationnelles, comportementales et de l’environnement routier associées à la conformité aux règles. Ces caractéristiques ont été analysées à l’aide des modèles de régression logistique à effets mixtes. \nLes résultats ont montré que la supervision des adultes, s'arrêter au bord du trottoir avant de traverser et la présence d'un compte à rebours sont positivement associées à la conformité aux règles. Environ 50% des enfants ont commencé à traverser en même temps que le compagnon adulte. Dans le groupe restant, plus de violations de règles ont été observées lorsque l'adulte a initié la traversée. L’interaction piéton-voiture a eu un impact mitigé sur la conformité aux quatre règles, ce qui a eu pour effet d’améliorer la conformité spatiale et la recherche visuelle, mais de réduire la conformité temporelle ainsi que la vélocité. \nNos résultats pourraient être utiles pour les municipalités désirant améliorer la sécurité des enfants autour des parcs urbains. À ce titre, allonger les temps de traversée et ajouter des décomptes numériques aux intersections avec feux semblent avoir un effet positif en ce sens.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".