Inequality in risk but equality in perception: A geospatial comparison of child pedestrian injuries with parental perceptions

Background: It has been documented that there are higher rates of pedestrian injury in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage.

Objective: To compare parental perceptions of the frequency of child pedestrian injuries with actual incidents.

Methods: Parents and caregivers of 336 5th grade children in Oakland, CA were asked to estimate the number of youth that had been struck by an automobile within ¼ mile (3 blocks) of their residence in the past 5 years. Locations of child pedestrian injuries for the same 5 year period were geocoded (as was each child's residence), and the counts of injuries in the ¼ mile around each residence were compared to parental estimates.

Results: Overall, parental estimations of injuries near them had low correlation with actual rates (correlation coefficient 0.12). While neighborhood income was a strong predictor of the actual frequency of child pedestrian injury, estimated injuries did not vary significantly with income. Although the Non-white children's residences were surrounded by more injuries than White children's residences, their parents made estimations that were not statistically distinct from the parents of White children. Parents of Latino and Asian children, who were surrounded by the highest rates of injuries, had the largest gap between their guesses and the actual injury incidents, drastically underestimating the number of injuries near them (regression coefficients: Latino 1.25, 95% CI 0.57 to 1.94; Asian 1.45, 95% CI 0.75 to 2.14). Whites overestimated and African-Americans slightly underestimated, though these findings were not statistically significant.

Conclusion: Despite a gradient of inequality regarding child pedestrian injuries, parents were strikingly uniform in their perceptions. These findings suggest that that the degree of disparity is not fully realized by those at highest risk.