Elsevier

Accident Analysis & Prevention

Volume 131, October 2019, Pages 350-356
Accident Analysis & Prevention

Parent-adolescent bicycling safety communication and bicycling behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2019.07.017Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The most common instruction to adolescents was to wear a helmet.

  • Over half of parents instructed their children (10–15 yrs) to ride on the sidewalk.

  • Agreement between parents and adolescents on bicycle riding instructions is low, overall.

  • Parent instructions were not reflected in adolescents’ real-world riding behavior.

  • Results suggest parental training in effective safety communication strategies is needed.

Abstract

Introduction

Efforts to encourage bicycling to school have increased in the United States. However, little is known about how parent-child communication affects bicycle safety. The purpose of this study was to examine parent-child agreement on biking instructions and their correlation with the early adolescents’ real-world riding behavior.

Methods

Parent-child dyads were asked open-ended questions about instructions they had given/received about bicycling. Answers were then coded into nine categories (e.g., crossing the road, bicycle control/handling). Distributions of parent-child agreement on parent-given bicycle safety instructions were examined in relation to the adolescent’s real-world riding behaviors.

Results

36 parent-child dyads were included. Average age was 11.9 (Range: 10–15) for adolescents and 43.3 (Range: 30–59) for parents. Common parental instructions included: wear helmet, ride on sidewalk, and trip routing specifications. High ‘ride on sidewalk’ instruction (38.9% both parent and adolescent, 22.2% parent only, 16.7% adolescent only) was concerning due to potential driveway conflicts. Agreement between parents and adolescents on reported instructions was low, overall. Mean safety-relevant event rates in real-world cycling did not differ significantly between bicycle safety instruction agreement groups (both parent & adolescent reported, parent only, adolescent only, neither). The proportion of time an adolescent rode on different infrastructure types (sidewalk, street, etc.) did not vary between dyads reporting parents had given instructions to ride on the sidewalk and those who had not.

Conclusions

Results highlight lack of agreement between parents and adolescents on cycling instructions the adolescent receives from the parent. Parent instructions to adolescents regarding bicycling safety were not associated with actual riding behaviors. Results suggest parent messaging to adolescents may be ineffective. Given parents are in a position of influence, results indicate a need for parental training on effective safety-related communication strategies to assist them in capitalizing on their parental role to increase their child’s safety.

Introduction

Overweight and obesity among adolescents has become a critical public health issue in the United States and is increasingly problematic worldwide. Physical inactivity is one of the main factors associated with weight increases among adolescents, and initiatives to increase activity have included active transportation to and from school, such as walking and bicycling. Efforts to encourage bicycling to school have been led by programs like Safe Routes to School (SRTS) (National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2017).

SRTS improvements, such as better bicycle facilities and improved crossings, have been implemented nationwide. However, bicycling crashes remain one of the leading causes and burdens of injury among adolescents aged 10–15 (Sleet et al., 2010; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2012; Hamann et al., 2013; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017; NHTSA, 2018). In the United States, Children ages 10–15 have over 57,000 bicycling-related emergency department visits and 50 deaths annually (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2017) and bicycling injuries involving motor vehicles tend to be the most severe (Hamann et al., 2013). The continued problem of adolescent injuries and deaths in cycling crashes supports the need for a multi-pronged approach to increasing safety that includes not only changes to the built environment, but also education of drivers, adolescents, and their parents.

Parents are typically one of the main sources of safety information and teachers of safety-related behaviors throughout childhood (Wurtele et al., 1991; Morrongiello et al., 2014). However, during early adolescence the parent-child relationship may rapidly change, with adolescents becoming more independent and resistant to parental guidance, including safety messaging (Laursen, 2004; Morrissey and Gondoli, 2012). Overall, the parent-child relationship during adolescence often becomes more egalitarian, which can result in weakened parental control and increased frequency and intensity of parent-child conflict (Branje, 2018).

Despite adolescent resistance to guidance and instruction, parents are poised as key influencers in their child’s bicycling safety. Parents are experienced road users who, through cycling and/or driving, have gained safety insights that are important to pass on to their adolescent cyclists. However, they often lack adequate training in what to teach their children, how to effectively communicate with their children, or do not take full advantage of their influential role (Muir et al., 2010). Little is known about parent-child communication concerning bicycle safety and how this translates to actual bicycling safety-related behavior. It is also unknown whether parental bicycling safety messaging is misunderstood, ignored, inadequate, or not present and how these issues relate to real-world adolescent bicycling behavior.

This purpose of this study was to 1) identify the types of bicycle safety-related messaging that take place between parents and their children in the form of instructions, 2) examine parent-child agreement on bicycling safety instructions, and 3) determine how parental bicycling safety instructions were reflected in their child’s real-world riding behavior.

Section snippets

Recruitment

Participants were recruited primarily via a university mass-email listserv. Emails sent through the listserv asked for interested participants to call or email the research team. The study was also advertised in a university hospital ‘Noon News’ newsletter and Twitter account, the local community school district’s virtual backpack, and as a flyer to contacts at the county neighborhood centers.

Eligibility and enrollment

Eligible participants were early adolescents aged 10–15 who attended school within the metropolitan

Results

Forty parent-child dyads were enrolled and 36 with complete data were included in this study. Average age of adolescents was 11.9 (SD = 1.5, range 10–15) and 43.3 (SD = 6.1, range 30–59) for parents (Table 2). Among adolescents, 58.3% were male and 88.9% were white. Among enrolled parents, 50% were mothers, 94.4% were white, and the majority were highly educated (90% had 4-year college degree or higher education).

The most common types of bicycling instructions reported by parents and their

Discussion

Parents have an influential role in modeling and teaching their children about traffic safety (Muir et al., 2010; Hoskins, 2014; Muir et al., 2017). However, parents often do not use their position as an influencer to its maximum potential in reducing their child’s injury risk (Muir et al., 2010). This study examined the type of bicycling safety instructions parents give to their children and the agreement between parents and children on the content of those instructions. The reported

Conclusions

Results highlight lack of agreement between parent-child biking instructions and lack of correlation between those instructions and real-world riding behaviors. Findings also suggest that parents may not be adequately equipped and may benefit from training in what to teach their children regarding risk factors and safety practices, as well as techniques for overcoming barriers to communicating with adolescents who may be resistant to parental messaging. Results from this study indicate need for

Funding

This research was funded in part by grant #1R49CE002108-01 of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control/CDC.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ryan Dusil and Matt Van Hoeck for their assistance with data collection and processing and Omotoyosi Soniyi, Niki Asa, Tara Cullison, Menno Schukking, and Alyssa Conrad for assistance with data coding.

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