ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that learning to cope with the urban traffic environment is a protracted and challenging process that engages a wide range of perceptual and cognitive skills. The contribution that psychology can make to this debate is fundamental because the area is embarked on fundamental analysis of the competences that are required to interact with the modern urban environment. Traditional educational approaches echo this view by assuming that children simply lack the knowledge of how the traffic environment works and set about developing materials that would enhance their knowledge. To examine this, the chapter presents children with a series of locations that were either very safe or manifestly dangerous. The child’s task was simply to say which was which. In other experiments, children were asked in a more open-ended way to construct safe routes to destinations.
