Abstract:

Portugal has a high number of traffic accidents every year. Many of these accidents happen because the incident participants disregard the road code guide and react dangerously upon facing general traffic situations. Furthermore, when drivers or pedestrians face situations previously unknown to them, they can react in an incorrect way, which can have negative impact and consequently lead to an accident. Children, as pedestrians and as future drivers, are also a portion of those traffic victims and many of them get run over. It is of utmost importance to develop mechanisms, in addition to those already developed, to reduce road accidents affecting children and to instruct children, as future drivers, about dangerous traffic situations they may encounter hereafter. This work consists in a mobile serious game for android, developed in Unity3d, designed for children learning aging between 9 and 12 years old. The goal is to teach and instruct the children about a variety of road safety aspects (such as how to properly cross a street or railroad track, being careful about bicycle paths, basic road signs recognition, vehicle speed control) in which they have to consider in order to build up a defensive attitude, both as a pedestrian and as a future driver. The game also instructs children about road safety aspects in a driver’s perspective.

Keywords:

Serious Games, Mobile Games, Road Safety, Children Education.