Children in Japan often wander around by themselves from around seven years old (1^st and 2^nd grades of elementary school). Although this is somewhat unusual from an international perspective, in Japan it is considered to be an essential part of the children’s health and development. In order to safeguard this tradition, improving the safety of children’s travel is therefore a requirement.　

Achieving this however, is easier said than done, due to the difficulties involved in identifying the zones and locations where traffic safety measures should be implemented. While the number of locations used by child pedestrians is enormous, traffic incidents involving children are rare, making data computation challenging. The goal is to evaluate quantitatively the potential risk at each location, while efficiently identifying places where additional measures are required.

Associate Prof. Matsuo, as lead researcher, explained, “This statistical model has two main characteristics. The first uses Empirical Bayesian estimation to combine the average impact of environmental road traffic conditions, such as traffic volume, intersection structure, and land usage status – as obtained from road traffic big data – balanced appropriately with past accident data. The second is to incorporate data on how much children travel with road traffic conditions using unique geo-informatized data on school commuting routes and walking groups held by Toyohashi City.

Ultimately, the fact that it identified seven or more potentially dangerous spots proved that it is more efficient and effective at such identification than methods based simply on past accident data. Furthermore, we validated the current policy of "implementing traffic safety measures primarily on school commuting routes," because Japanese children tend to use familiar routes not only on their way to and from school, but also during any daily outings, even while accidents along these routes are increasing."

Associate Prof. Matsuo added, "This research would not have been possible without the geo-informatized data on school commuting routes and walking groups made available by Toyohashi City. I had been acting as an advisor to Toyohashi City on safety measures for school commuting routes, and as an administrative initiative, I planned the efficient management and utilization of data on school commuting routes and walking groups in 2015. After proposing the use of geo-informatized data and the data structure, this was officially adopted from 2016. Back in those days, I never imagined that this data would become useful for my research, but I am delighted that the measures implemented six years ago are still being used. I hope that in the future, other municipalities will also promote the use of geo-informatized data with school commuting routes."