Child Supervision

The primary purpose of this countermeasure is to increase caregiver supervision of children when they are exposed to traffic, or when they are nearby direct access to traffic. Caregiver involvement is an effective means for shaping children’s behaviors (Percer, 2009). The State can require such training for teachers, day care workers, and others licensed to care for children. The programs can also be made available to parents, babysitters, or other caretakers through parent-teacher organizations, faith-based organizations or places of worship, medical providers, or even direct mail or internet access. One of the ways to market these programs may be to demonstrate to parents the amount of supervision their child/children need (and effective training). Rivara et al. (1989) and Dunne et al. (1992), for example, have shown that parents consistently overestimate the ability of children younger than 9 or 10 to negotiate in traffic. An observational study of young children in parking lots found that 90% of all children were out of arm’s length of an accompanying adults at some point (Rouse & Schwebel, 2019). Adults should actively supervise children and not assume that their presence will be adequate to ensure safer behavior.

This countermeasure has not been systematically examined.