Background The Armadillo Club educational program was an element of the nationwide road safety awareness campaign entitled Armadillo Club Always Belts Up which has been conducted in Poland since 2005. The Armadillo Club was carried out by Motor Transport Institute in 2012/2013 school year and was targeted at kindergartens and elementary schools children and their parents. The article presents the campaign and the educational program as well as its evaluation outcomes.

Objective The objective of the whole campaign was to make the fastening of seatbelts more attractive for children and the educational program aim was to educate 4-12-year-old children in selected issues related to safety, with particular emphasis on road safety.

Results In total, 13613 children from 105 kindergartens (7030 children), 61 schools with classes 1–3 (4021 children) and 37 schools with classes 4–6 (2562) participated in the Armadillo Club. According to respondents, majority of club activities were carried out in accordance with the program guidelines (91%). 42% of respondents considered the program as interesting and 43% – as very interesting. According to 15%, certain elements were interesting, other were less interesting. 98% of respondents declared that if the campaign was to be continued, they would participate again.

Conclusions The innovative character of the whole campaign lies in the combination of awareness raising campaign with enhanced enforcement and the Armadillo Club programme. The evaluation results of both the campaign and the program were satisfactory. The post-tests show that the use rate of seat belts and child restraint systems increased by 40% in Poland since 2004. Currently 94% of all children are transported in child restraint systems. Road accidents statistics show that the number of children killed in passenger cars dropped by 55% in relation to decrease of 35% in number of all people killed in road accidents in Poland from 2004 (before the campaign) till 2013.