The reason kids struggle to cross the street safely
Think your child can cross the street alone? Until a child has reached 14, they don’t have the perceptual judgment or motor skills to make it safely to the other side of a single-lane road. A group of 6 to 14-year-old kids were asked about their strategy to cross a 9-foot, single lane road where the cars were going 25 mph. The gaps between the cars varied from 2 to 5 seconds. The kids crossed the road as fast as the adults did and they picked the same size gap between a passing car and the next oncoming car as an adult. The problem was with timing the exact moment to step off the curb and then, having the motor skills to follow through. The younger the kid, the more problems they had figuring out the gap time. There was a delay between the “cross now” thought and actually stepping off the curb resulting in 8% of the 6-year-olds getting hit. Teach your kids strategies to cross the street safely.
