“Look both ways before you cross the street! Look left, right and left again!” These classic childhood _______ lessons are passed on from generation to generation. Yet traffic accidents remain one of the most common _______ of injuries and deaths for children around the world.

Past studies have found that youngsters are less good at _______ road dangers than adults, but Anat Meir, a lecturer in industrial engineering and management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negeve and the Holon Institute of Technology in Israel, wanted to decide exactly which behaviors lead to accidents, with the goal of finding ways to _______ them.

To do that without putting anyone in danger, she turned to virtual reality. In 2019 Meir and her colleagues simulated (模拟) 18 streets in Israel and used an eye-tracking device to study how 46 adults and children (ranging in age from seven to 13) evaluated when it was safe to cross. Children aged seven to nine, they found, exhibited the least _______ when crossing, typically deciding to step into the virtual road with little or no hesitation, even when their field of vision was limited. “We had parents looking on who were saying, ‘Wow, I cannot believe my child just crossed there!” Meir says.” It caused them to _______ their child’s road-crossing abilities.” The older children did not perform much _______ , though for different reasons. They often stayed on the curb (路缘) for an improper amount of time— a (n) _______ that they are less able to distinguish between safe and dangerous situations than adults— and in interviews did not express an understanding of how _______ such as car speed and field of vision affect crossing safety.

Some ________ do seem to improve crossing success. In Meir’s most recent study, described in Accident Analysis & Prevention, two dozen seven- to nine-year-olds experienced 40 minutes of danger-detection training. Afterward, Meir and her colleagues ________ trainees’ and control kids’ performances in the virtual road-crossing task. The children who ________ safety instructions were significantly better at crossing than the control subjects.

Next, Meir and policy makers aim to figure out how to ________ these findings to the real world. “These results are important because you cannot find solutions without a (n) ________ of the problem,” says Joseph Kearney, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa. “Now it’s up to people to determine how they can develop ________ programs for children and for parents about good road-crossing habits.”