Although teaching children how to be a safe pedestrian might not prevent every accident, you can teach your children to protect themselves and exercise caution, which can prevent many a child pedestrian accident. Children should learn about street safety as soon as they are able to walk outdoors. Here’s how you can teach children street safety at all ages:

Preschool

• Supervise them at all times. Preschoolers should never be allowed to cross the street alone, and you should always hold their hand while crossing the street.
• Teach by explaining. Explain what you are doing as you do it. For example, if you are crossing the street together, you should say, “When I cross the street, I always stop at the curb. Then I look and listen for cars. First I look left, then right, then left again. If it’s clear, then I can cross, while I keep looking for cars.” If your child can’t tell the difference between left and right, you can say “this way” and “that way.” You can also point out others who are exhibiting safe or unsafe behaviors (quietly, of course).
• Teach by example. Your behavior should be an example for your children. They are watching you to show them how to do the right thing.
• Praise them. Encourage safe behavior by praising them for copying your actions or words.

Children ages 5-10

• Accompany them. Young children should have an adult or older child with them every day until they show they can safely cross the street. Don’t overestimate their abilities.
• Make sure they follow these rules when crossing the street:

STOP at a curb or the edge of the road, and only at a corner or intersection.

LOOK left-right-left for moving cars.

WALK, don’t run, when road is clear or all cars have come to a stop.

STAY ALERT and keep looking for cars as you cross.

• Remind them to use their eyes and ears at all times. Child pedestrians can be at risk not only when crossing the street, but whenever they are near a street. Remind them that cars that appear to be parked may not always be parked, and to exercise caution when walking near driveways and parked cars.
• Teach them to obey all traffic markers. In addition to learning to cross at a WALK signal, children should learn to check for traffic, even if there is a green light or WALK signal.

Children ages 10 and up

• Choose their route to school. Walk to school together to find the most direct, safest route to school. When walking alone, they should follow that route and never use shortcuts.
• Make sure they use the sidewalk. If there is no sidewalk along their route, then they should keep to the left and walk facing oncoming traffic so they can see cars coming.
• Make sure they are visible. Many jackets and backpacks come with reflective materials built-in. You can also add reflective tape to any article of clothing, which is available at hardware or fabric stores.

In the ten years between 1990-2000, there was a 49 percent decline in the rate of traffic-related pedestrian deaths in children ages 14 and younger. The decline can be attributed to decreased exposure to traffic, educational programs, increased law enforcement and efforts to improve pedestrian environments. Unfortunately, some of the decline may be because children are simply not walking as frequently. According to the SAFE KIDS organization, nearly half of all elementary school children walked or biked to school in 1969. But by 1995, only 10 percent of children walked or biked to school.

Walking is a no-cost mode of transportation which gets children to exercise, improves air quality by reducing vehicle emissions and allows parents and children to spend time together, free from the distractions of driving. You can help make your community a place that allows children to walk to school and other activities—safely and free from danger.

However, teaching children how to safely cross the street is not enough. One of the best ways to prevent child pedestrian accidents is by increasing “walkability” in your community. The National SAFE KIDS Campaign collected over 9,000 “walkability checks” across the country. The study showed that nearly 60 percent of parents and children found at least one serious hazard on their routes to school. Frequent hazards included a lack of sidewalk or crosswalk, wide roads, complicated traffic conditions, improper parking and speeding drivers. You and your community can help kids avoid these hazardous conditions by creating safe walking environments. Here’s what you can do:

• Promote driver awareness about safe behaviors, traffic laws and penalties for violations through media campaigns, brochures and public service announcements.
• Encourage parents to walk or bike with their children to school, and also to walk or bike to work, to ease traffic congestion.
• You can create programs such as “walking school buses,” which provide adult supervision along routes child pedestrians take to school.
• Develop programs that encourage more walking and less driving, such as creating a school-wide “Walk-to-School” day.
• Contact your local law enforcement department about increasing traffic enforcement around your child’s school, community center or other facility where you notice hazards.

Everything we do, think, and feel is made possible by the workings of our brain: our perception, cognition, movement—everything. Most fundamentally, our brain provides the seat of our personality and our sense of self. It gives form to the person we are and, for children, the person they might become. That’s why a child’s traumatic brain injury (TBI), one of several common auto accident injuries,  is a parent’s worst nightmare. Although the parent’s son or daughter physically survives an accident, the child is in some significant way not the same.

Such a child faces an uncertain rehabilitation process. Improvements will be made, parents are told, but it is unlikely that their child will return to the level of functioning before the injury. Changes will persist in how he or she navigates the world. The child may struggle to learn, to speak or to control his or her impulses, for example. Once parents learn this, they must somehow cope with the loss of the image they held of their child, and to form a new one that reflects the realities of their child’s injuries.

Because I believe traumatic brain injury in children—typically occurring in accidents involving cars—represents such an important subject, I’d like to cover the basics of how brain injury can occur in children. I’m certainly not a neurologist, but over the course of my career as a personal injury attorney, I’ve learned that there are a few principal ways in which the child’s brain can suffer trauma as a result of an auto accident.

There are two basic scenarios that lead to brain injury. The first is when the child’s head is relatively stationary and is hit by a moving object—a child runs out into the street and is struck by a car, for example. The second is when a child’s head and body are moving—as they are when the child is riding in the car—and abruptly stops upon contact with a stationary object—the dashboard, for example. In both of these scenarios, a great deal of physical force and energy is abruptly transferred to the child’s head and brain.

Upon contact with the object, the child’s brain—which sits inside the skull, surrounded by a layer of protective fluid—will move violently, probably striking the inner wall of the skull. This contact typically leads to the brain being bruised, resulting in “contusions,” as they are called. These contusions will certainly occur in the region of the brain nearest to the point where the child’s head contacted the object. They may also occur, however, on the opposite side of the brain, especially in accidents where the child is moving. Imagine it: upon contact, the child’s head suddenly stops, but the brain continues moving—first forward, striking the skull, and then backwards, only to strike it again.

Contusions represent injuries to the outer layer of the brain, known as the “cortex” or “grey matter,” composed of the tips of the brain cells. As a result of the violent movement I just described, injury can also occur to the inside of the brain—the “white matter,” which is made up of the long wire-like extensions of the brain cells: the “axons.” That’s why this type of damage is known as “diffuse axonal injury.” Injury to the inner part of the brain is especially likely when the accident causes the brain to twist, stretching and breaking these long axons, killing the cells of which they are a part.

Contusions and diffuse axonal injury represent the most immediate trauma that can be caused by an auto accident. Further injury can also occur as the result of complications from this damage. Delayed injuries can occur if bleeding inside the head creates excessive pressure, which can prevent adequate blood flow to the brain. Increased pressure can also build if there is “edema,” or swelling of the brain. Immediate medical treatment following the accident is the best way to prevent this type of secondary damage.

I hope this article has given you a basic understanding of the basic physical mechanisms that underlie brain injury. TBI in children is—I’m sorry to say—a common result of auto-related accidents. Fortunately, there is a great deal that can be done to prevent these injuries, and with proper medical care, rehabilitation and legal representation, injured children can make astounding recoveries. These recoveries may take time, but they are a testament to the devotion of loved ones, the skill of medical professionals, the expertise of qualified attorneys and—finally—the adaptability and plasticity of our amazing brains.

Knowing your child’s abilities on their bike is the key to preventing bike accident injuries. Though of course each child is different, there are some general guidelines about the abilities of children at different ages.

Ages 1 to 5

• Most children ages 5 and under are not ready to ride a bike. You can start teaching them about bike safety while they are passengers on your bike, however.
• Teach preschool cyclists how bicycles are not the same as a toy car or a tricycle. Bicycles are not toys.
• Teach them to stay away from the street, and to keep an eye out for things that might hurt them.
• Make sure they wear a helmet at all times, and they understand why helmets are so important.
• Familiarize them with different parts of the bike and helmet, and how to use the brakes to slow and stop.

Ages 5 to 8

• Many children learn to ride a bike during this time, and they should learn safe riding skills at the same time.
• Children at this age should not ride unsupervised.
• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that children in this age group ride only on the sidewalk, assuming that riding on the sidewalk is legal in your community. Make sure that your children learns to alert pedestrians to their presence, and understand that being on the sidewalk does not mean they are free from danger. They should still watch for cars in driveways, and always walk their bikes across intersections.
• Make sure your child develops riding skills like avoiding obstacles in the road and riding in the straight line while looking behind.
• Teach them about selecting a good route. If they ride their bike to school, you should ride or walk with them until you are confident they can do it on their own.
• Even if they are riding on the sidewalk, children should always ride in the direction of traffic, and learn to obey traffic signs and signals.
• Teach them how to communicate with others on the road with hand signals and eye contact, and to look out for signs from others.
• Familiarize them with all the equipment on the bike, and the importance of their helmet.

Ages 9 to 12

• There is no set age for determining whether a child is ready to ride on the road. However, most children in this age group have developed the skills to ride on arterial roads. Beginner cyclists, no matter their age, should ride with supervision.
• Before letting your child ride on their own, think about their behavior out of traffic. Are they able to control their impulses? Do they take risks? Do they have trouble paying attention? Their behavior on the road will likely echo their behavior off the road.
• Teach them about advanced riding skills such as selecting gears and road positioning.
• Emphasize the importance of wearing a helmet. Many preteens and teens will begin to think helmets are uncool. See below for tips on how to get around this dangerous notion.

Ages 13-17

• Teen cyclists have much more independence. Stress that this means that they also have more responsibility as well.
• Teens should continue to work on riding skills like panic stops and riding in the winter.
• Teach them about common collision types and how to avoid them.
• Everyone should avoid riding at night. If they must, teach them to use proper lights on their bike, along with reflective clothing.

It can be easy for children—and even parents—to see their bicycle as a toy. The reality is that bikes are not toys. In fact, more children ages 5 to 14 go to hospital emergency rooms for injuries associated with bicycles than with any other sport. Despite the obvious dangers, riding a bike is a wonderful activity for kids. For younger kids, it improves coordination, provides exercise and is a fun activity that the whole family can do together. For older kids, riding a bike gives them the chance to be independent. You can teach your kids to understand that biking should be a whole lot of fun—with a healthy dose of caution.

The key to keeping your children out of bicycle accidents is knowing their limitations. Remember—children are not small adults. Children simply do not have the cognitive abilities that adult riders do. Here’s some examples:

• Children are not able to use their peripheral vision as adults do, and particularly children in grades K-3 have trouble spotting objects in their peripheral vision.
• Children do not naturally use sound to identify where traffic is coming from, and instead rely solely on their vision.
• Children are unable to grasp the complexity of many traffic situations. For example, they might believe that a road is safe because they cannot see any cars present, despite a nearby blind curve.
• Children are easily distracted and have poor impulse control. They may not understand the serious consequences of crossing a road without waiting for the light to change or the road to clear.
• Children believe that adults are responsible for their safety, and will look out for them, even a stranger driving an oncoming car.

Knowledge of your child’s limits is just one part of keeping them safe on the road. The Consumer Rights Alliance is dedicated to protecting children from bicycle accidents. You can find out more about keeping your kids safe here.