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A Resident's Guide for Creating Safe and Walkable Communities
Chapter 3: How can the safety of my neighborhood be improved?Education .  Education and public awareness strategies can be used to:
Education and public awareness initiatives must be sustained, concentrated efforts that target a specific community problem. A short or one-time effort will probably not have lasting results. To be more effective, education efforts should be combined with engineering changes as well as law enforcement. Education begins at home—start by learning how you can be a safer pedestrian and driver, and how you can better enable your children, family, and friends to be safe on the road. To expand education and public awareness efforts to the broader community, here are some activities to improve pedestrian safety that you can join or start:
For More Information:Visit the National Center for Safe Routes to School Web site (http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/) or call 866-610-SRTS for more information about educating children, parents, and teachers about pedestrian issues and starting a Safe Routes to School program in your area. For developing education programs within your schools, consider contacting the superintendent of public instruction, the state or school PTA president, the school nurse, the governor's traffic safety representative, or the district superintendent. Other venues, such as parks and recreation programs, after-school programs, and churches may also provide opportunities for both pedestrian and bicycle safety education. Some questions to ask include:
For More Information:
Community Success Story 8: Pedestrian Safety EducationSan Diego County, CaliforniaDevelopers of a child pedestrian safety training program in San Diego County targeted a bilingual, low-income school where the majority of the children walked to school. Studies have shown that first-generation low income school children are at a much higher risk of pedestrian injuries and fatalities. 
The presentations were done bilingually, using still images and video footage from their own neighborhood to make the lessons more relevant and concrete. Students were asked to identify the unsafe behaviors depicted and to suggest safer alternatives. For example, they were shown an image (at right) of children in dark clothing walking across an intersection where a car had already begun to turn into and were asked questions such as: were the children very visible to the car, and should the children have walked into the street? Other topics covered included stopping distances of vehicles in the rain, at different speeds and for large trucks; mid-block crossings; facing traffic while walking; running; turning vehicles and more. In a survey conducted two weeks later, it was found that the children were largely able to retain the information presented earlier. However, many students responded that they felt their parents, the Safety Patrol, or their siblings were responsible for their safety, and also that "cars will always stop for kids." Thus, it was determined that there was a greater need to emphasize to the children that they were the ones responsible for their own safety in future training materials. For more information, contact Sheila Sarker at shsarkar@ucsd.edu.
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Program ContactTamara Redmon Dick Schaffer What's NewThe FHWA Safety Office is continually developing new materials to assist states, localities and citizens in improving pedestrian and bicycle safety. The materials listed on this page were completed recently. Examples of State/Local Pedestrian Safety Action Plans LTAP/TTAP Interchange, Tamara Redmon Evaluation of the Focused Approach to Pedestrian Safety Program (PDF 225 KB) “Not in Roadway” Pedestrian and Bicycle Crashes (PDF 132 KB) How to Develop a Pedestrian Safety Action Plan (PDF 5.14 MB) FHWA Guidance Memo Contains Provisions to Improve Pedestrian Safety Toolbox of Countermeasures and Their Potential Effectiveness for Pedestrian Crashes Pedestrian Safety Guide for Transit Agencies Evaluation of Pedestrian Countermeasures in Three Cities: San Francisco, Las Vegas and Miami |
