Abstract
Injuries to child pedestrians have held the rank of “captain of the kings of death” for the past 20 years, yet only recently have epidemiological methods been applied to their prevention. In the past preventive strategies were based on assumptions about causation drawn from case series, but such an approach was bound to fail. Some crucial questions need to be addressed. Firstly, why do rates of injury among child pedestrians change over time, and why do some populations have higher rates than others? Secondly, within populations, why are some children injured and not others?2 Children are exposed to the risk of pedestrian injury only while walking, so measures of frequency should take account of exposure. For example, child …