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Walking, cycling and transport safety: an analysis of child road deaths
Beth Sonkin1, Phil Edwards, Ian Roberts
1London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK.
Insights
Child pedestrian and cyclist death rates remain higher than car occupant rates, despite overall declines. Increased walking and cycling could reduce these disparities and improve child safety.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Epidemiology
- Pediatric Safety
Background:
- Road traffic injuries are a significant cause of mortality in children.
- Understanding trends in child road user deaths is crucial for developing effective prevention strategies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze trends in road death rates among child pedestrians, cyclists, and car occupants in England and Wales from 1985 to 2003.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of road traffic injury death rates per 100,000 children.
- Calculation of death rates per 10 million passenger miles traveled for different road user groups.
- Inclusion of children aged 0-14 years in the study population.
Main Results:
- Overall death rates declined for child pedestrians, cyclists, and car occupants.
- Pedestrian death rates (0.55/100,000) remained higher than car occupants (0.34/100,000) and cyclists (0.16/100,000).
- When adjusted for distance traveled, child cyclist deaths were 50 times higher and pedestrian deaths nearly 30 times higher than car occupant deaths.
Conclusions:
- Further interventions are needed to decrease traffic injury death rates for child pedestrians and cyclists.
- Reducing these risks may promote walking and cycling.
- These measures could also help mitigate social class disparities in injury mortality.
Objective:
To examine trends in road death rates for child pedestrians, cyclists and car occupants.
Design:
Analysis of road traffic injury death rates per 100 000 children and death rates per 10 million passenger miles travelled.
Setting:
England and Wales between 1985 and 2003.
Participants:
Children aged 0-14 years.
Interventions:
None.
Main Outcome Measures:
Death rates per 100,000 children and per 10 million child passenger miles for pedestrians, cyclists and car occupants.
Results:
Death rates per head of population have declined for child pedestrians, cyclists and car occupants but pedestrian death rates remain higher (0.55 deaths/100,000 children; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.42 to 0.72 deaths) than those for car occupants (0.34 deaths; 95% CI 0.23 to 0.48 deaths) and cyclists (0.16 deaths; 95% CI 0.09 to 0.27 deaths). Since 1985, the average distance children travelled as a car occupant has increased by 70%; the average distance walked has declined by 19%; and the average distance cycled has declined by 58%. Taking into account distance travelled, there are about 50 times more child cyclist deaths (0.55 deaths/10 million passenger miles; 0.32 to 0.89) and nearly 30 times more child pedestrian deaths (0.27 deaths; 0.20 to 0.35) than there are deaths to child car occupants (0.01 deaths; 0.007 to 0.014). In 2003, children from families without access to a vehicle walked twice the distance walked by children in families with access to two or more vehicles.
Conclusions:
More needs to be done to reduce the traffic injury death rates for child pedestrians and cyclists. This might encourage more walking and cycling and also has the potential to reduce social class gradients in injury mortality.
