State Secretariat for Social Services, Families and Disability. Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs

Design, implementation and evaluation of a Road Safety education programme aimed at elderly people, with the goal of building an educational setting methodology in road safety for them.

Epidemiological studies estimate the population of elderly people among the population groups with the highest growth in traffic accidents in recent years. Currently road safety education is regulated in schools, but the concept of road safety education is, and should be more extensive. Road Safety Education must be given across all major life time. The elderly are just one of those groups in which the Road Safety Education is a "pending subject". Moreover, if we analyse the few interventions that take place in our country on road safety education on elderly people, they lack sufficient scientific basis, if not, a serious evaluation of its effectiveness.

This way we find a lack of publications and educational resources that have the sufficient quality to be aimed at this group. In fact, most road safety programmes for elderly that have been launched in our country, have mainly focused on "the information, the call of care, the awareness of the problem", but they lack training in preventive strategies for acquiring positive and/or compensatory behaviours.

And the truth is that this situation does not correspond to the differential importance that could and should take this issue into this group, -we must not forget that the elderly and children are considered by the OECD as "vulnerable users of the traffic system"-. Differential importance not only from the fact of being a risk group larger than the rest of the users and growing as we shall see,- but that lessons conducted on road safety education in addition to increasing the safety of those who receive it, they are a positive element in the integration of older people.

It is necessary therefore to increase and extend the presence of the road safety education, but especially to improve programmes and educational experiences focused on this group. This involves the development of new programmes in this area to improve the effectiveness of this tool, to contribute to the creation of more responsible, safe and caring behaviours in the field of traffic that make possible our elderly move safely in the traffic environment.

This programme has led to the development of the educational program, just like the support tools for implementation.

In this sense, a psychological Workshop, lasting 3 hours, has been designed, where they have established the content and teaching methods used in it. It has been made the training of monitors using the appropriate course and through a publication where the contents of it are collected. On the other hand, regardless of the development of the visual application of the exposure the monitor have to make, an audiovisual piece that is viewed in the first part of it and introduces some of the fundamental aspects that subsequently they will work in the course have been developed.

The programme would be split into two sub-programmes that would serve two roles aimed at two complementary groups of elderly: Elderly as pedestrians and as drivers of a vehicle. In addition to these two roles, it has been served a third referred to Elderly as users of public transport.

The base is always the same, always dealing with the same risk factors, which also will be few since this feature correlates with efficiency. It should not be forgotten that different researches related to unsafe behaviours in the context of traffic have translation processes in their base. This has shown that people who drive without wearing the seat belt tend to skip over the traffic lights, run, drive in the opposite direction, or that people who cross for the unsuitable crosswalk areas ignore traffic lights, etc.

The treatment for factors such as the perception of risk is performed in a generic form only particularizing some behaviour that have greater representation from the point of view of violation and the accident rate. In short, this is achieved by the same process based on principles of learning in a controlled manner the opposite effect to that which occurs naturally.

However, certain adaptations related to the group, their personality characteristics, etc., as social behaviour variables as the reference group should be made. In this sense, the trainer will need to have the ability to detect or warn those points.

The contents of the Psychological Workshop is structured into five blocks with the following titles: Traffic accidents (Statistical data, the accident profile of the reference group, what is to be pedestrian?/what is driving?, macro causes, consequences), Errors and violations (Two-made base of accidents), Causes of car accidents (Risk factors in the elderly population -perceptual deficits, motor deficits, morbidity, medicines-), Appropriate strategies to tackle the risks, Close and commitment.

For the central activity of the application of the course there is a team of trainers provided with the resources who apply the programme in the previously approved centres.

Ceuta, Melilla, Madrid, Catalonia and Valencian Community 2004

Castilla la Mancha, Castilla-León and Extremadura 2006

For the evaluation activity a pre and post questionnaires (one of short-term application and another for long-term application) which are completed by those attending the courses have been developed.

Made for Education and Road Safety Initiatives, by the DATS Research Group, in collaboration with the METRAS Research Group and the FACTHUM.lab. Research Group.
 

• Trainer's Manual
• Report
• Multimedia Publication  [SP] [CAT]

Development and innovation

IMSERSO. State Secretariat for Social Services, Families and Disability. Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Government of de Spain.