To help avoid accidents, it is important to teach younger kids to cross the street with supervision and to only cross at an intersection with a crosswalk or traffic signal.
In addition, it is very important that your kids always look for traffic by looking left, right, left, and over their shoulder for traffic, and then continue to look while crossing the street.
You should also teach your kids to:
- avoid wearing headphones and listening to music while walking or biking, which can interfere with their hearing cars honking or a train's horn
- wear reflective materials if they will be out early in the morning or after the sun has gone down so as to increase nighttime visibility
- always walk on the sidewalk, but if they must walk in the street, then walk facing traffic
- walk or ride with a buddy or in groups
Most importantly, train your kids so that they don't assume that cars will stop for them and always wait for cars to stop before entering an intersection and crossing the street.
