Objective  To examine safety condition of walking traffic among high school students in Hangzhou city of Zhejiang province and to provide evidences for intervention on road traffic injury among the students.

  Methods  Using multistage random cluster sampling, we selected 690 students from 4 junior and 4 senior high schools in urban and suburban regions of Hangzhou city for a questionnaire survey between March and July 2015.

  Results  Of all the students, 33.19% reported commuting to school by walking every day and 55.65% reported waiting for green light before crossing intersections. Among the students, 83.33%, 90.76%, and 87.97% reported looking around, using crosswalks, and strictly under the control of traffic light when crossing roads. There were 13.13% and 21.30% of the students reporting not using intersection and running frequently when crossing roads. Only 10.90% of the students had eye contacts with drivers of automobiles approaching when crossing roads. The ratio of the suburban students strictly under the control of traffic light when crossing roads was significantly lower than that of the urban participants (P < 0.05); while the junior high school students reported a significantly higher frequencies of having eye contacts with drivers of automobiles approaching and running when crossing roads than the senior high school students (both P < 0.01). Insufficient management on their school commuting by schools, families, and transportation agencies were addressed by the students; 24.38% of the students indicated that they had never seen personnel engaged in assistant traffic management at intersections; while 86.46% considered that drivers and pedestrians should take equal responsibilities to promote road traffic safety.

  Conclusion  There are many individual risk factors for road traffic injury among high school students and specific education on traffic safety and behavior intervention should be carried out based on traffic behavior and attitude of the students.