Meaner Streets : Survey Shows Kid Pedestrians Face Higher Injury Risk in Santa Ana

With his children playing safely in his front yard behind a waist-high chain-link fence, Paul Lopez watched the neighborhood children on Cedar Street doing what kids do best in those precious few hours between school and darkness: ride bikes, toss a ball back and forth, and chatter away.

And every now and then, a car whizzed by.

“A while back,” Lopez said, “a kid ran across the street. He didn’t look. Luckily, the truck braked. It hit him and threw him on the street, but I saw the kid running around a couple of days later.”

As the father of children ages 4, 6 and 10, Lopez said he’s concerned about their safety whenever they play outside: “I see a lot of little kids running across the street. They don’t even look to see if there are any cars. It’s pretty dangerous.”

Santa Ana streets, particularly the smaller neighborhood streets throughout the congested central city, can indeed be dangerous.

As the county’s most populous city, Santa Ana ranks highest among eight central Orange County communities in the number of pedestrian injuries involving children under the age of 15, according to a study by the UC Irvine Pediatric Injury Prevention Research Group.

During the two-year study, which was completed in June, 149 children were hospitalized as a result of pedestrian injuries in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange, Fountain Valley, Villa Park, Tustin and the Tustin foothills.

Of those 149 injuries, which occurred in streets, alleys, driveways and parking lots, 57% took place in Santa Ana. Three of the seven fatal injuries also occurred there.

“Previous research has shown that children who live in high-density, poorer neighborhoods have higher incidents of injuries, particularly if there is high traffic volume,” said Diane Winn, associate director of the Pediatric Injury Prevention Research Group.

The potentially dangerous mix of high numbers of people and cars in poorer areas is compounded by limited play areas for children, fewer opportunities for them to participate in extracurricular activities, which cost money, and a lack of information among their guardians on pedestrian safety. Language barriers also may be a factor.

Children under 5, the UCI researchers discovered, are particularly vulnerable to street traffic.

Young children, research has shown, can’t be taught to cross a street properly. To safely do so, Winn said, is a complicated task requiring 26 different individual actions.

“Numerous studies have confirmed that young children under 8 are not physically, behaviorally or cognitively able to be safe pedestrians,” she said. “Parents also tend to overestimate their young children’s capabilities.”

Children, according to a safety film developed by the German Traffic Safety Council, view traffic situations differently than adults:

Young children do not perceive danger. They can’t properly judge the speed or distance of a moving car and have no idea that a car needs room to stop. Their field of vision is one-third narrower than that of adults. Children think because they can see a car, the driver can see them. They can’t readily determine the direction a sound is coming from. Children react spontaneously and unexpectedly. They are in perpetual motion and are easily distracted.

Slightly more than half of the pedestrian injuries in the UCI study involved children under the age of 5, with 2-year-olds accounting for more than one in five of the injuries. About half of the 2-year-olds were injured in driveways and half in the street, Winn said.

Because pedestrian accidents are the leading cause of severe injury in young children in the central Orange County study area, the UCI research group is teaming up with the Orange County Health Care Agency to develop a bilingual educational program aimed at reducing pedestrian injuries among preschool-age children in these predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.

The program, however, will focus on educating adults, not children.

Said Winn: “We want everyone involved in trying to get the message out to the drivers in these communities as to what to expect of the children and to realize that children are not little adults. They’re not going to behave like adults, and we’re not going to be changing them: This is how they grow and learn. They’re curious and they’re exploring their environment. But they don’t understand the dangers.”

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The education program, which will target two residential areas of Santa Ana over a four-month period in 1995--marks the first time the UCI research group and the Health Care Agency have worked together on a project.

“The research (UCI has done) has documented the need in the community,” said Amy Dale of the Health Care Agency’s Injury Prevention and Control Program. “We’re working on a problem that’s really been defined.”

The program will be developed and implemented with a grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Details of the education program have yet to be determined, Dale said, but neighborhood presentations, a Spanish-language photo novella, and a short video are being considered.

A communitywide advisory committee made up of representatives from law enforcement, schools, city government and other public agencies and community organizations will meet for the first time in February to go over preliminary results of the UCI study and help plan the education program.

Ironically, Santa Ana recently received an American Automobile Assn. award for Outstanding Achievement for its 1992 pedestrian death and injury record.

Santa Ana, in fact, had the best nationwide rating among 38 cities of approximately the same size. (Seven deaths and 3,405 injuries in 1992.)

The numbers, however, reflect pedestrians in all age groups.

“Santa Ana has done a good job on older children,” Winn said. “But there is just a lack of programs addressing pedestrian safety among preschool children, not only in Santa Ana but nationally.”

Most of the injured children in the UCI study were struck at mid-block, having darted out between parked vehicles, according to preliminary results of the UCI study. Although the injuries were primarily the result of the children’s activity, a number of the accidents also appear to be the result of the driver’s inattention.

Unlike automobile safety, in which injuries can be greatly reduced by wearing seat belts, or bicycle injuries, which can be prevented by wearing helmets, Winn said there is no single issue to focus on in preventing pedestrian injuries among children.

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As the UCI researchers continue to analyze their data, Winn said, they’ll be identifying factors that place children at risk, such as population density, traffic volume, driver behavior, parent-child expectations and neighborhood risk factors.

Norms within a particular neighborhood regarding play and pedestrian safety issues also play a role, Winn said.

“If you go into a neighborhood and everyone does something a certain way, probably all the children in that neighborhood are permitted to do it,” she said.

The researchers, who won’t finish analyzing their study data until the middle of next year, also will be looking at the role street design and availability of parks may have played in the injuries.

“A lot of these areas are overbuilt, with little play area for children,” Winn said. “All the environmental factors play a role, and that’s part of what we’re studying now.”

At the end of the four-month education program in 1995, the researchers will analyze its effectiveness by returning to the two Santa Ana neighborhoods. There, they will conduct interviews and observe to see whether there has been a change in attitude regarding children and pedestrian safety.

The results, Winn said, will serve as a basis for expanding the educational program to other communities with similar pedestrian injury problems.

“We are really going to try and mobilize the neighborhoods to get them involved,” Winn said. “We, as adults, have to put children in safer environments, and it’s not just the responsibility of the parents. It takes a larger community effort in making the environment safe for children.”

Walking Woes

A two-year study on children pedestrians under 15 who were injured by traffic was conducted in an eight-community area.

Children Hit by Autos

Santa Ana: 85

Anaheim: 36

Garden Grove: 14

Orange: 6

Tustin: 4

Fountain Valley: 2

Note: There were no injuries in Tustin foothills or Villa Park. Two injuries to children who lived within the study area occurred while the children were outside the study area--one each in Palcentia and Westminster.

Source: UCI Pediatric Injury Prevention Research Group