The core task of cycling training is to prepare children to use a bicycle on the roads.

The emphasis these days is less on knowledge of the rules of the road and how to behave correctly. Increasingly, police officers and teachers have to establish the prerequisites for safe cycling on the roads. Primarily, that involves ensuring children have the motor skills required to cycle safely, but it is also about ensuring their bicycles are in a safe and sound condition.

The cycling training program of the DVW and the UDV, which has been in place since 2007, involves more comprehensive and long-term support for children, starting when they are at kindergarten.

Shortcomings in terms of motor and sensory skills are identified in most federal states when children are examined when they start school or during medical examinations. The findings provide the basis for support programs.

• Motor skills-based cycling training is carried out from when children are about eight, based on the program of the DVW and the UDV. On completion of that and immediately before the actual cycling training begins, the police officer carries out another check to make sure the children can control a bicycle safely. If necessary, they can take a further course to help them with this.
• On completion of the cycling training, the children assess their own learning, and their parents receive detailed information and are told about further training that is available as the children get older.

Because of the scale of the cycling training (1,100 centers with the involvement of around 3,000 police officers and around 760,000 children in their fourth year of school every year), it has a very widespread impact greater than that of any other road training measure.