New Spanish Translation Helps Protect "Children in Traffic"

One of the AAA Foundation's best-selling videos has long been "Children in Traffic," which describes how children react to motor vehicles and why they behave very differently from adults. A new version is now available in Spanish and makes this valuable information more widely available.

"Children in Traffic" has a long international history. The video was originally produced in Germany as "Kinder in Verkehr" in 1983. It used unstaged scenes of ordinary German children interacting with motor vehicles and demonstrated why children don't necessarily understand how cars behave. Its message: Children are not mature enough to understand how traffic behaves. In situation after situation, the video made it clear that drivers must be the ones to stay alert and that they can't assume children will recognize dangers that seem obvious to an adult.

To help North American audiences' understanding of childrens' behavior, the AAA Foundation acquired rights to the German video, renamed it, and dubbed it into English. From the outset the "Children in Traffic" was an AAA Foundation best seller. By 1999, however, the original German video looked faded and dated; the vehicles included old Mercedes and the children, many of whom wore backpacks and somewhat dated European clothing, looked very unfamiliar to American audiences. As a result, the AAA Foundation re-shot the video, using North American scenes and children, to produce "The New Children in Traffic."

The new version re-creates the same scenarios as the original German video, but the directors staged the events using young American actors. As with the original German product, it was made with a single voice-over rather than with actors speaking lines. This format made it easy for Anna Zacher of the Children's Hospital and Health Center in San Diego, CA decided translate the text and dub in a Spanish version. "We started using it as an educational tool, and we have a lot of Spanish-speaking parents" Zacher says. Zacher had been showing the English video and doing simultaneous translation, "So we thought if it were in Spanish it would be a lot more user-friendly and a lot more convenient." A local production house produced the translated version. The process was fairly simple, Zacher says. "We had to do a few minor tweaks to slow down the video footage or do a freeze-frame, because the Spanish is longer," she says. With funding from the Department of Health Services she made additional copies and allowed others to distribute them.

Now the Spanish version of the video "Los Niños y el Tráfico" is available on the AAA Foundation's website. The new video will help Spanish-speaking drivers understand the behavior of "los niños" and will help keep all children safe.

The AAA Foundation's new Spanish-language video can be ordered from our "products" page.

For information about child passenger safety, check out "Seated for Safety" in our research section.