Objectives: To quantify the effectiveness of safety education of pedestrians.
Design: Systematic review of randomised controlled trials of safety education programmes for pedestrians of all ages.
Main outcome measures: Effect of safety education on pedestrians' injuries, behaviour, attitude, and knowledge and on pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions. Quality of trials: methods of randomisation; and numbers lost to follow up.
Results: We identified 15 randomised controlled trials of safety education programmes for pedestrians. Fourteen trials targeted children, and one targeted institutionalised adults. None assessed the effect of safety education on the occurrence of pedestrian injury, but six trials assessed its effect on behaviour. The effect of pedestrian education on behaviour varied considerably across studies and outcomes.
Conclusions: Pedestrian safety education can change observed road crossing behaviour, but whether this reduces the risk of pedestrian injury in road traffic crashes is unknown. There is a lack of good evidence of effectiveness of safety education for adult pedestrians, specially elderly people. None of the trials was conducted in low or middle income countries.