Effective education of essential traffic-related safety items to children in cities

Educating traffic knowledge and safe behaviours to children is an effective strategy for improving their traffic safety. However, due to the physical and cognitive limitations of children, implementing a proper and effective education and training programme can be complicated. It is thus vital to investigate how the effectiveness of such programmes can be improved. To this end, 200 children aged 6–9 years were asked to participate in this study. Different characteristics of the children and their parents were obtained using several forms and questionnaires. Structural equation modelling was then used to analyse the importance of contributing factors. The difference between the score of each child before and after completing the education programme was defined as their traffic educability. The results showed that children who do better in school, children who have older siblings and those who are more active have greater potential to learn traffic knowledge. Furthermore, with respect to parents, having a higher education level, driving frequently, trying to highlight the importance of traffic rules in front of children and being concerned about children's trip safety can increase children's ability in traffic education.