Objective: To investigate the causes of bicycle injuries among middle school students in rural areas and attitudes of students, their parents and teachers toward bicycle injuries.
Methods: 103 respondents in 14 groups were interviewed using focus group discussion outline. Data were taped and interpreted by two experienced researchers using the QSR NVivo 8.0 software.
Results: Disobeying the traffic rules, riding bicycle carelessly and fast speed when riding bicycle were the first leading causes of bicycle injuries among middle school students. The relative importance of disobeying traffic rules, inattentive riding the bicycles and fast speed were 1.00, 0.80 and 0.78 respectively. Students, their parents and teachers held different attitudes toward the determinants of child bicycle injuries. The three groups considered the most importance objective cause was 'poor road condition (23 person-time)'. Fast riding speed was the most important subjective cause (students and parents were 14 and 8 person-time during the interview) but teachers thought that disobeying traffic rules was the most important one (by 14 person-time).
Conclusion: Residents in rural China had low awareness of child bicycle injuries. There is a need to improve the awareness of road safety among rural residents. Future intervention strategies should be tailored to address main determinants to reduce the incidence of road traffic injuries among children.