Riesgo derivado de los Procesos Hidrológicos

Providing education and training is a key strategy in increasing pedestrian and motorist awareness and reducing risk behaviour. Since changing behaviour can be a long and arduous task, traffic

5.4 Measures of traffic education 107

(e.g., public relations campaigns) and addresses both pedestrians and drivers has the greatest chance of success (Harkey and Zegeer , 2004).

Firstly, knowledge of meanings of signals and signs, regulation of right-of-way, correct crossing behaviour, use of traffic facilities (e.g. pedestrian push button) etc. has to be included in the public traffic education.

Brinks (1990) in Netherland found that there were severe deficiencies with regard to the knowledge of priority rules, particularly when right of way is not indicated by signs or road marks. Also the knowledge of rules governing complex manoeuvre (such as turning left at an intersection) is inadequate.

A good example of knowledge provided by educational material on pedestrian crossing at signalised crossings in Australia (Mainroad, 2009) includes following contents with simply and easily understandable interpretations: (1)Know your pedestrian traffic signals; (2)Remember turning vehicles must give way to pedestrians; (3)Take the time to cross safely.

Based on the recent studies on pedestrian safety, important elements of traffic education program among bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorist are proposed by FHWA (2006):

• Teach important bicycling and walking skills to youngsters: work with school administrators and teachers to identify target ages for key educational messages.

• Teach important bicycling and walking skills to adults: work with college and high school administrators and teachers to identify key educational messages.

• Include bike and pedestrian information in driver training: work with local driver training instructors and violators to identify key messages for delivery to new drivers, as well as those required to take remedial driving courses.

• Determine which safety messages are most important for which audiences.

• Create a process for effectively delivering those messages: work with the local media and other groups to determine the best way to reach the audiences identified above, given the resources available.

For example, The DETR (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions) in Netherland has continued and increased the "shock index" level of its “Kill your Speed TV” adverts, employing home video of actual child victims. These stress appropriate speeds rather than simply staying within speed limits (Hummel, 1999).

As mentioned above, education campaigns to target groups are necessary in order to give proper education to specific groups with certain behaviour patterns (e.g., motorists, elderly, school children, adults). Education for children and the elderly has been paid more attention in Australia, Germany, the U.S.,Netherland etc .

For children: School education and “Safe routes to school programs”

Victoria(Australia) is among the leaders in developing educational materials for use in schools and has published thorough-going evaluations of its programs from pre-school through to secondary school. Anthony and Wilcock (1991) found that 55% of early childhood centres used “Starting Out Safely”, a program aimed at developing safe pedestrian and restraint use behaviour for pre-schoolers. 78% of primary schools included traffic safety education in the curriculum while 88% of secondary schools using at least one of the traffic safety lessons developed by VicRoads(a subordinate authority which is the State's road and traffic authority in Victoria, Australia) and 80% using two or more (Anthony et al 1992). Study of traffic education in Victoria indicated that primary schools spent an average 86.8 hours teaching road safety, compared to an average of 57.9 hours in secondary schools (Harrison et al. 1997). The use of resources varied considerably between years and grade levels.

“Safe routes to school programs” in Australia are a package of measures aimed at reducing the risk encountered in the journeys to school through a package of integrated activities, including the promotion of the safest routes, the provision of some low-cost engineering treatments to reduce risk at hazardous locations, and education of the broad school community in the philosophy behind the route and its safe use.

For the elderly

It was pointed out by Van Wolffelaar (1988), the elderly should learn to cope adequately with the effects of aging. The main targets of traffic education of elderly traffic participants should be:

• Primarily education: Improvement of the knowledge of traffic rules and traffic skills;

• Secondary education: Improvement of the knowledge of the effects of aging, learning to cope with loss of function (compensation), and acknowledgement of the need of a good mental and physical condition.

Walk with care is a program provided throughout Victoria, Australia, which is aimed at improving the safety of elderly pedestrians. It focuses on high accident locations, the essential elements of the program include (Cairney, 1999):

• Specially trained volunteer discussion leaders conduct sessions with groups of older residents throughout a municipality to give information about safe ways of using roads and collect information on problem spots.

• A survey is distributed to older persons throughout the municipality to supplement the discussions.

• Council staff determines necessary engineering works on the basis of discussion group outcomes, survey results, and crash statistics.

• Engineering works and safety messages are publicized through local newspapers, information bulletins, and municipal newsletters.

Program evaluation

Since education is a long-term measure, it is difficult to evaluate education programs by their effects on crash reductions, rather some other evaluation methods like interviews, behaviour observation can be employed. For example, Cairney (1999) proposed one method in Australia: Giving leaflets with information about correct crossing procedures to people crossing the road incorrectly, followed one week later by enforcement of pedestrian regulations at the same site, video recording of crossing behaviour, and continuing group discussions at three monthly intervals.

Application of traffic education in China

• Education of basic knowledge of traffic regulations, correct behaviour of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers etc. must be provided to the public as soon as possible. Possible approaches include TV advertisement, community study, leaflets delivery etc. As an important social activity, it requires a multidisciplinary cooperation including traffic engineers, police, educational organizations etc.

• A system of traffic education must be developed with target groups of children, adults and the elderly.