Exploring the crossing behaviours and visual attention allocation of children in primary school in an outdoor road environment

Primary school children are likely to participate in traffic as pedestrian road users. Due to their immature levels of physical and cognitive development, it is difficult for children to make safe decisions while crossing roads. The aim of this study was to analyse the behaviour characteristics and visual attention distribution of children in primary school as they cross roads. In total, 10 children successively passed through an unsignalised intersection, an unsignalised T-intersection and a signalised intersection on a designated test route in an outdoor road environment. Three HD cameras and an eye tracker were employed to record and analyse their crossing behaviour and visual attention allocation. When crossing the three types of intersections, the children allocated more fixation points and a larger proportion of fixation time in the small area in front of their bodies and the area where their eyes were facing and lacked a visual search of the traffic areas on the left and right sides of the zebra crossing. The fixation area was relatively singular. The most common unsafe behaviour was crossing without observing the traffic environment. The frequency of left and right observations of the traffic environment was low, reaching the lowest level at the unsignalised T-intersection. Children in primary school have not yet fully mastered safe crossing behaviours. These findings indicate the need for targeted programmes to train children to cross roads safely and correctly, and provide useful information for researchers and road designers.