Child Pedestrian Traffic Safety Education Based On Virtual Reality Technology

The rapid growth of social economy promotes the rapid development of transportation.However,road traffic safety issues always threaten children's lives.Children pedestrians' safety becomes a global public health challenge.Compared with developed countries,children pedestrians in developing countries face higher road safety risks.The unbalanced economic development in China makes children in urban and rural areas face different road safety challenges.Therefore,it is urgent to carry out effective children pedestrians' safety education and training in China.But despite the urgent need for effective pedestrian safety education interventions,current school-based child safety education and teaching activities have often been ineffective in improving children's actual pedestrian behavior and promoting traffic safety knowledge.In recent years,the continuous improvement of the technical characteristics of virtual reality(VR)technology and the continuous reduction of application costs has prompted researchers to investigate its innovative applications in the field of education.Virtual reality technology becomes an innovative safety education training tool in the field of education.Virtual reality technology,with its features of immersion,interactivity and imagination,provides the possibility to expand the traffic safety learning space,innovate traffic safety education models,and improve learning effects.Therefore,the systematic exploration of children pedestrians' safety education supported by virtual reality technology will help to test its applicability and effectiveness in solving pedestrian traffic safety education problems,and it will have theoretical significance and practical value to guide the reform and innovation of children's traffic safety education and teaching practice in China.However there is still a lack of research and effect evaluation of the integration of the characteristics of VR technology and teaching theory.As a result,on the basis of combing the relevant theories of inquiry-based learning and combining the learning availability of virtual reality technology,this research designed and developed a traffic safety education learning environment supported by virtual reality technology.And this research conducted a quasi-experiment investigating the learning effects and experiences of children in grades one to three of three primary schools in urban areas,suburbs,and townships of Hubei Province in this learning environment.And further investigated and explored the influencing factors.The research contents include four aspects as following:First,designing and developing children's traffic safety teaching interventions from a technical and theoretical perspective.This research integrated fully immersive virtual reality technology with inquiry-based learning theory to design and develop teaching interventions supported by virtual reality technology based on the specific needs of children's traffic safety education.Second,focus on diagnosis and analysis of children pedestrians' cognitive characteristics and behavioral habits in virtual reality environment.Carrying out a group teaching experimental study of virtual safety education,and using behavioral quantitative data and qualitative interview data to determine what common road traffic behaviors children have when walking,understand the reasons behind children making wrong road traffic behaviors,and explore the behavioral differences among school children in urban areas,suburbs,and townships of Hubei Province.Third,verifying the teaching effect of children's traffic safety education supported by virtual reality technology.Based on the results of the learning performance of the virtual reality traffic safety education teaching experiment and the learning experience tracking survey conducted 6 months later,the teaching effect of the children's road safety education program based on virtual reality technology was evaluated.Last but not the least,exploring the influencing factors of the teaching effect of fully immersive traffic safety education supported by virtual reality technology.Based on the collection and arrangement of children pedestrians' demographics and family background,combined with the importance of children's families to road safety education,the influencing factors of virtual reality teaching intervention teaching effects were explored and compared.Results revealed the following findings:(1)Virtual reality was an effective tool for children pedestrians' safety education and training.One aspect was the effectiveness of virtual reality technology in diagnosing children's wrong road traffic behavior.Children pedestrians generally have wrong road traffic behaviors,such as inattention,crossing the road directly,crossing the road when the green light flashes,and not checking the traffic condition before crossing the road.The potential causes of these wrong road traffic behaviors included children's lack of awareness of specific road signs,lack of comprehensive understanding of traffic rules,misunderstanding of traffic rules,and lack of daily supervision and guidance by adults.Another aspect was the effectiveness of virtual reality technology in correcting children's wrong road traffic behavior.Combining teachers' personalized safety guidance and repetitive exercises,children pedestrians' behaviors of "directing to the road" and"directly crossing the road with flashing red or green lights" improved when they completed tasks for the second practice in a virtual learning environment.Children's overall behavioral performance improved significantly.In addition,through the follow-up inspection of the teaching effect,it is found that children's traffic safety knowledge is acquired and safety awareness is improved.(2)The socioeconomic status of the growing environment,parents' educational level,family economic level,and number of family vehicles had no significant impact on children's learning performance and learning experience in traffic safety education supported by virtual reality technology.The grade level and the way children go to school were significant predictors of learning performance.Family views on children's road safety education,transportation modes to and from school,and travel time to school were significant factors that affected the learning experience.