Young pedestrians and young cyclists

This is a chapter from a recently published book "Human factors for highway engineers". "Countermeasures should be and are in fact developed constantly along all three lines: education, enforcement and engineering. What they have in common is that, whatever the type, successful development of a countermeasure depends largely on good analyses of the problems to be tackled and on evaluation of how people react to changes in the 'person-vehicle-road-environment' system. Methodologically sound evaluations and good cost-benefit analyses of the three types of countermeasures are essential. This chapter deals mainly with problem analyses, i.e., analyses of children's accidents, behaviour and abilities in particular traffic and road environments, and offers only a few examples of solutions. It is hoped hat after reading this chapter, the engineer will be better equipped to design and evaluate countermeasures as a result of more insight into the young road user problem."