Improving child safety and mobility on the road network: A challenge based on ITS?

It is quite well known how adults react to changes in street design and we are starting to learn how they react to Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) services. However we do not know much about how children respond, and to what extent ITS services are feasible for children of different ages. There is a need to further study this area, as such ITS systems have to be improved and essentially adapted to young users. This will lead to a new generation of such devises. This paper presents the results on two expert questionnaires focusing on the potential safety and mobility benefits to child pedestrians of targeted types of ITS. Questionnaire I was answered by 14 European experts and six North American experts, i.e. altogether 20 experts of the field; Questionnaire II by 15 European experts, six North American experts and two Israeli experts. Five different types of functional requests for children were identified based on work done within the framework of the European Pedestrian Quality Need project. The first expert questionnaire was structured to collect expert opinions on which ITS solutions or devices would be, and why, the most relevant ones to satisfy the five different functional requests of child pedestrians. Based on the first questionnaire, fifteen areas of interest (problem areas) were defined. In the second questionnaire, the experts ranked the fifteen areas, and prioritized related ITS services, according to their potential for developing ITS services beneficial to children. This paper focuses on the areas considered by the experts to be the nine most important ones. The ranking is meant to be used as background information to plan research and actions to reach a more sustainable city environment for children. Such an improvement of safety, would lead to increased mobility and a more sustainable way of living. Children will learn how to live to support their own health and a sustainable city environment.