Child Active Transportation Safety in the Environment

Keeping Children Safe in Transportation Through Digital Traffic and Road Safety Tools

Partner

CHASE Team (26 Different Academic Institutions

Canadian Institute for Health Research (Funding)

The Digital Lab

Type of work

Health Information

technology
Software & Web
Media & Animation
Overview

Active Transportation Safety is Critical

The Digital Lab and the CHASE team came together to develop the Child Active Transportation Safety in the Environment (CHASE) website. While active transportation including walking and cycling is healthy for children, it puts them at a greater risk for injury. In 2018, more than 20,000 Canadian children were injured in traffic collisions. While safety interventions like speed bumps, pedestrian overpasses and bike boxes have been made to reduce accident occurrences, few studies exist about children's transportation safety. To help city planners in creating safe cities for active transport the information on how safety features keep children safe along with their impact on traffic must be clear. To achieve these goals, the collaborative team developed the CHASE website.

Research & Design

Evidence-Based Guidance to Support Active Transportation

The Digital Lab and the CHASE Team were supported by the Canadian Institute for Health Research to develop the CHASE website to increase active transportation in Canadian children and youth. This website acts as a centralized hub to guide users of all educational backgrounds about how different traffic and road interventions impact both child safety during active transportation and road traffic. To ensure that the CHASE website contained the highest quality information the team engaged with road safety researchers from across Canada to understand how to best support children’s safety. 

The CHASE website groups road interventions into three main categories; bicycle, vehicle and pedestrian interventions to streamline the user experience. Each of the interventions come with descriptions, helpfulness scores and evidence-based studies that have studied these interventions. To ensure that information is accessible and visually appealing, animated visuals were created for each of the interventions. The CHASE site additionally highlights risk assessments for vehicle collisions, and active transportation injury by intervention to ensure that city planners can make the safest decision for people in their city, while also encouraging active transportation.

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Impact

Improved Active Transportation Safety

The CHASE website has been utilized by public health advocates and city planners in order to support them in advocating for road interventions that will keep communities safe and increase the safety of active transportation. The clear and simplistic animations easily visualize interventions and the concise information pages provide comprehensive evidence-based information in one place. The CHASE website supports active transportation for children while ensuring that they are protected from injury.