A traffic park or children's traffic park is a park in which children can learn the rules of the road. A traffic park is also called a transportation park or traffic garden or safety village depending on locale.
Traffic parks are frequently created as an attraction within a larger park. In other cases, they are single-use parks and often small in scale. They can be found in urban as well as rural areas.
Children are allowed to use bicycles or pedal-powered cars to navigate the streets and operate according to traffic laws. Sometimes they share a buggy with their parent, who can provide guidance as they circle the park. Typically, traffic parks are scaled-down versions of real street networks, with the lane and street-width proportional to the smaller vehicles. Often they include operating traffic signals and during busy times are even staffed with traffic police.
One of the intentions of the traffic park is to improve awareness of traffic safety among school-aged children. Many traffic parks enable children to gain hands-on experience crossing streets and with bicycle or other pedestrian safety challenges in a highly controlled environment devoid of actual motor vehicles.
Traffic parks exist throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Traffic parks in Asia and Europe are focused on traffic safety through pedal-powered vehicles. In the United States and Canada they use bicycles as well as electric, motorized vehicles. These North American parks are called safety villages, because of broader emphasis on safety for fire, electrical, food and other educational purposes.
In the United Kingdom parks are called experiential safety and lifeskills centres, with education mainly delivered indoors in life-sized sets. There are 11 in England, two in Scotland, one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland.