Backgrounder - CIHR Strategic Team in Traffic and Road Injury Prevention for Canadian Children

[ Press Release 2011-26 ]

Road Traffic injury is a leading cause of death and disability for Canadian children. Approximately 130 children under 15 die as a result of road traffic injuries every year – as vehicle occupants, pedestrians, or cyclists. Many of these deaths can be prevented.

The CIHR Team in Traffic and Road Injury Prevention Program for Canadian Children will work to reduce the rates and severity of injury that Canadian children experience every year in road crashes. The team brings together researchers and strategic partners from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives that have the potential to achieve innovation and leadership in injury prevention initiatives for children both in Canada and worldwide.

Just as the automotive industry is important to Canada, road safety for our children is important to all Canadians. The CIHR Traffic and Road Injury Prevention Program for Canadian Children (TRIP) team will provide practical knowledge – expressed as products, policies, and programs – which will prevent deaths and injuries among our children.

The overall research project will be led and operationally managed by Principal Investigators Dr. Anne Snowdon (University of Windsor) and Dr. Andrew Howard (The Hospital for Sick Children).

The initiative consists of three sub-projects:

  1. Child Safety Seat Interventions and Public Policy Action addresses the high rate of child occupant injuries in vehicles.

  2. Child Vehicular Safety Product Innovation and Commercialization builds on the work of researchers in sub-project one to translate knowledge of the patterns of safety seat use and misuse into the design and commercialization of a new generation of child safety seats (forward facing seats with side-impact protection of the head, use of innovative LATCH systems to offer greater stability of the child seat in a crash).

  3. Health Promotion and Pedestrian and Cycling Safety examines pedestrian safety and cycling safety for children.

The total investment for this initiative is $1.7 million over five years, with financial contributions as follows:

Canadian Institutes of Health Research - $600,000
AUTO21 Network of Centres of Excellence - $734,200
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada - $200,000
University of Windsor- $150,000
Transport Canada - $60,000

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