Scottish Government

SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE CENTRAL RESEARCH UNIT

Development Department Research ProgrammeResearch Findings No.145

to and from Schoolen routeChild Accidents

Colin Buchanan and Partners

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Main Findings

• Out of 1,231 child pedestrian casualties injured during school travel hours, 150 involved either a bus as a hitting vehicle or as a vehicle present at the location of the accident. In these accidents 4 children were killed and 53 were seriously injured. One hundred and eleven children were slightly injured.
• Children in the age group 11-14 account for about two-thirds of all accidents where a bus is involved, the majority being boys and casualties aged 12-13 years old.
• The majority of casualties occur on the journey home from school as children alight from buses at the non-school end of the journey.
• At least 22% of the casualties are associated with contract school bus services.
• Most children are running at the time of the accident.
• The most typical casualty is therefore a boy aged 11-14 injured running across a road having alighted from a local service bus on the way home from school.
• The research findings present problems in designing remedial action - because of the diverse geographical distribution of accidents and the fact that they tend to occur at the home end of the school journey, engineering and traffic management solutions may not be appropriate. The age group most at risk (11-14 yr olds) is a difficult one to reach and bring about a significant change in behaviour. However, some benefit might be gained from audits of existing school bus contract specifications that lead to changing routes to minimise road crossings by children.

Introduction

The National Travel Survey indicates that the school journey accounts for over a quarter of all trips made by those under 16 years of age. It can also be a dangerous journey: recent research and statistics show that 38% of pedestrian casualties amongst 12-15 year olds occurred on a journey to or from school. ¹ The research also showed that the casualties in just over half of this age group were injured in accidents occurring within 500m of the school. For primary school children 81% were injured within 500m of the school. The statistics also show that for these accidents 17% were due to buses obstructing the view of the road, 15% were parked vehicles and 15% stationary vehicles.

There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that a significant proportion of child pedestrian accidents may occur just before or just after a child has boarded or alighted from a bus.

The objectives of the study were to:

• Determine the extent of all child pedestrian accidents on the way to or from school and examine the proportion of those where a child has just alighted or is about to board the bus.
• Ascertain whether more accidents happen to children alighting or about to board a contract compared with a public service bus (anecdotal evidence suggests that this is the case).
• Establish if there is any pattern in the nature of such accidents (e.g. crossing the road in front of/behind a parked bus, crossing near the bus stop and not at a pedestrian crossing, running to catch the bus, running to school after alighting from the bus etc.)
• Compare the types of accidents between primary and secondary school children.

Methodology

The study was largely quantitative and was based upon a two-tier data collection process. Initial collection of data was from the client in the form of STATS19 records. In addition to strict STATS19 data, police forces also retain textual records of other information about the accident and these will include plain language descriptions. To gain a greater understanding of the scale and scope of the problem, it was essential that the accident stories were accessed and analysed in detail, and this required close liaison with all police forces in Scotland.

STATS19 data comprised all records for accidents meeting the following criteria:

• The accident occurred in 1999 or 2000 between the hours 07.00 and 17.00 (inclusive) on a weekday; and
• A casualty aged 18 years or under was involved

Accident reference numbers for the 1,184 target accidents (i.e. those occurring on school days during school travel hours) were identified and listed by Police Force. These numbers were issued to each force (following earlier consultation) with a request for a copy of the accident story.

As each police force adopts different methods for storing accident information, each force approached the matter differently. A number of forces were able to ascertain the accidents involving buses from other STATS19 and causation factor data held electronically. Each accident story was read and each casualty associated with each accident was coded with information relating to bus involvement.

Results

The STATS19 records for 1999 to 2000 illustrated that 11 children were killed as pedestrians on journeys to or from school and 251 were seriously injured. Also, 969 children were slightly injured (see Table 1).

Table 1 All target casualties by age and severity of injury (1999-2000)

Further research based upon the plain language descriptions of accidents obtained from the various police forces found that 150 (12%) of the casualties are injured when a bus is positively identified as being present as a hitting or non-hitting vehicle.

Of the 150 casualties identified, 4 were killed and 35 seriously injured. Children in the 11-14 age group accounted for almost two-thirds of all accidents where a bus was involved and that the majority of these casualties were age 12-13.

In 103 (69%) cases of the 150 casualties which were found to be positively associated with buses, the bus type could not be ascertained. It is clear, however, that 33 contract school buses were involved in child pedestrian casualty accidents comprising 22% of the total. Figure 1 illustrates the disaggregation of the casualty numbers based upon bus type.

Figure 1 Casualty Association by Bus Type

The largest group (57%) of accidents occur in the afternoon and involve pedestrian movement shortly after alighting from a bus (78% of children). This tends to suggest that these accidents are happening at a non-school end (home or otherwise) of a trip from school. This is represented graphically in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Distribution of target Casualties by Time of Day

Evidence from the Scottish Household Survey suggests that the number of children who travel home by bus is unlikely to be significantly different from the number who travel by bus to school. This, therefore, suggests that the homeward trip is a more dangerous one.

Conclusions and Recommendations

There is some support for the anecdotal evidence put forward to suggest that a significant proportion of child pedestrian casualties may occur just before or just after a child has boarded or alighted from a bus.

The afternoon journey accounts for the majority of casualties. Action to cut these casualties is likely to prove to be difficult. Such casualties will be injured in a dispersed set of accidents - rather than close to school - where it would be difficult to target traffic engineering or traffic management measures effectively.

The high number of casualties in the 11-14 year old age group, particularly involving boys, also presents its own problems in terms of remedial action. This age group is a difficult one in which to reform attitudes and this adds emphasis to the justification for the existing work in primary schools in providing children with road safety skills for life.

A smaller but significant proportion of children are injured having alighted from a contract bus. This is an area where there may be justification in local authorities looking at their existing specifications for contract services with a view to reducing the need for children to cross a busy road. This may require route audits where the needs of individual groups of passengers are considered.

The coding of STATS19 Field 3.13 (School Pupil Casualty) is not fully reliable and the value of maintaining this field as part of the STATS19 dataset may be an issue for consideration at a GB level. Improvements to the STATS19 collection procedures could include a greater focus on the presence of buses at accident scenes. This could be achieved in a number of ways including:

• Amending STATS19 Field 3.13 to include bus codes
• Making it mandatory in the STATS19 process to include a vehicle record for all parked vehicles identified in Field 3.11.

The cost of such improvements would have to be set against the benefits from doing so. This paper offers no opinion on a balance of such costs and benefits.

1 The Older Children pedestrian Casualty, Carole Millar Research, CRU Research Report, 1998