Critical situation of child passengers: pre and post – campaign assessment, edu-car plan
Authors: Galeano Rosa Gallego 
Published: October 2012

Background

Within the framework of studies on road mobility of children and adolescents, the FGR conducted a study on the mobility of children aged 0–14 as passengers of private vehicles and of school buses, aiming to determine ways of preventions of child road accidents.

Objectives

Analyse the current situation about the mobility of children after the Public Service Campaign (PSC) conducted by FGR.

Methods

These quantitative studies were carried out in two stages: (1) A first stage between 2008 and 2009 for a status report on Road Safety in the country, especially Child Road Safety and (2) a second stage, carried out in the first half of 2010 which studied the effects produced by the PSC ‘Use a Child seat. Travel safely. Get there safely’, carried out by EDU-CAR nationwide in the first semester in 2010 in order to raise awareness on Child Road Safety.

Results

Although the situation is clearly critical, pre and post campaign results show statistically significant changes: the percentage of children travelling completely unrestrained in Montevideo decreases 6.4 points in percentage (from 73.3% to 66.9%) while CRS use increased 4.8 points (from 9.5% to 14.3%). Although 63% of children younger than 1 year old were travelling in a CRS, the increase in the use of CRS is mainly due to children aged 1–4 that increased from 19.5% in 2008 to 27.7% in 2010. There is a bottleneck, however, in children aged 5–14 years old, 99.5% were not travelling in a CRS, and 30% of them were travelling in the front seats.

Background

In Queensland alone, three children per week are involved in low speed vehicle run-overs. Accurately identifying LSVROs is time-consuming and resource intensive due to lack of consistent definition and inconsistent coding of events. Even if accurate case ascertainment can be achieved, detailed information required to inform prevention measures (ie, risk factors) is not consistently recorded in current forensic and health record systems.

Aims

The purpose of this collaboration is to address the shortcomings of the current systems by developing a reliable and sustainable prospective system of surveillance of LSVROs to improve case and risk factor identification, and inform prevention strategies.

Methods

The collaborative comprises all of the key stakeholders including multiple primary service delivery organisations, data custodians, government organisations/policy advisory groups, and academic institutions. Representatives on the collaborative are responsible for identifying and effecting changes in their organisations/agencies through mechanisms such as modified data collection proformas, data collection practices and data elements.

Results/Outcomes

Analyses of data collected from the prospective system will inform the development of a range of injury prevention interventions to reduce LSVRO incidents. The capacity and utility of the prospective data collection system will be evaluated by comparing data quality and capture with existing, routinely collected data. An ongoing operational review of the implementation of the prospective data collection system will also occur within the collaboration.

Significance/Contribution to the Field

This is the first time that such a large Queensland based collaborative group has formally combined to improve and evaluate prospective injury data collection on a specific injury topic. This dataset will be the most comprehensive dataset to date on LSVROs, and will directly influence and guide policy and decision makers to implement strategies to reduce LSVROs in Queensland. This model can be implemented in similar data systems nationally, and may be applied to additional injury mechanisms.