New Project Launch - Autistic Children Matter

We are extremely happy to announce that we’ve kick-started our 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: 𝗔𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗖𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 project, funded by The Road Safety Trust.

Led by Associate Professor Yee Mun Lee and Dr Yue Yang this project is in collaboration with Dr Elizabeth Sheppard from the University of Nottingham and Leeds City Council.

We hosted Lizzy earlier this month to showcase various scenarios in HIKER, our immersive pedestrian simulator at Virtuocity —one of the main methods we’ll be using in the project.

HIKER demonstrations of different crossing scenarios

This project brings together autistic children (aged 11–13), caregivers, their road crossing trainers (Independent Travel Training – ITT), and engineers to explore:

• What challenges autistic children face at road crossings
• How they cross roads at signalised and unsignalised crossings
• Why these challenges arise

Trainers’ reports provided by the Independent Travel Training (ITT) team at Leeds City Council (LCC) will be analysed, and questionnaires will be distributed to caregivers nationwide. To move beyond subjective measures, we will also use HIKER, the UK’s largest pedestrian simulator to investigate how autistic children cross the road compared to a control group at unsignalised crossings, assess how caregivers’ crossing decisions influence their children’s, and evaluate the impact of different signalised crossing designs (developed in collaboration with the LCC engineering team) on autistic children’s crossing behaviour and visual attention using eye-tracking technology. Throughout the project, we will work closely with our Local and National Stakeholder Advisory Group (SAG). The findings will contribute to real-world improvements in infrastructure design, education and training, and policy in the short and medium term.

For more information on this project please contact Associate Professor Yee Mun Lee at [email protected]

L-R Dr Lizzy Sheppard, Associate Prof Yee Mun Lee and Dr Yue Yang outside Virtuocity