ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: The 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. METHODS: The 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. RESULTS: A 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. CONCLUSION: The 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.
