BikeSafe: Evaluating a bicycle safety program for middle school aged children

•Students demonstrated increased bike safety knowledge from pre to post-testing.•Knowledge gain achieved across schools and class periods, regardless of instructor.•Class period had no significant effect on test scores.•The understanding of improved helmet fit was due to the 2-finger rule.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to measure the effectiveness of a bicycle safety education curriculum for middle school age children in order to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities of bicyclists hit by cars in Miami-Dade County.MethodsThe University of Miami BikeSafe® program includes a four day off-bike middle school curriculum that follows a train-the-trainer model, where a small number of staff trains a larger group of grades 6th–8th physical education teachers from various schools to teach the bike safety curriculum to their students. Subjects in this study included 193 students from 18 classes (3 per school) at 6 selected middle schools. Measures included a knowledge assessment of the curriculum that was administered to students pre- and post-curriculum implementation. Data were collected and analyzed with school and class period examined as predictors of post-score.ResultsA significant difference (p < .001) was found between pre- and post-test conditions across all subjects. In addition, there was no significant difference between testing from class periods (p > .05), suggesting that a standard intervention was applied.ConclusionThe BikeSafe educational curriculum was found to improve the bike safety knowledge of middle school aged children. Future efforts will focus on sustaining and expanding this program throughout Miami-Dade County and other high risk communities.