ABSTRACT

Teen drivers are at high risk for car crashes, especially during their first years of licensure. Providing novice teen drivers and their parents with a means of identifying their risky driving maneuvers may help them learn from their mistakes, thereby reducing their crash propensity. During the initial phase of learning, adult or parental supervision often provides such guidance. However, once teens obtain their license, adult supervision is no longer mandated, and teens are left to themselves to continue the learning process. This study is the first of its type to enhance this continued learning process using an event-triggered video device. By pairing this new technology with parental feedback in the form of a weekly video review and graphical report card, we extend parents’ ability to teach their teens even after they begin driving independently. Twenty-six 16- to 17-year-old drivers were recruited from a small U.S. Midwestern rural high school. We equipped their vehicles with an event-triggered video device, designed to capture 20-sec clips of the forward and cabin views whenever the vehicle exceeded lateral or forward threshold accelerations. Preliminary findings suggest that combining this emerging technology with parental weekly review of safety-relevant incidents resulted in a significant decrease in events for the more at-risk teen drivers. Implications for how such an intervention could be implemented within GDL are also discussed.

ABSTRACT

Crash rates among teenagers are highly elevated during the first months of licensure. Parent-imposed driving restrictions on initial driving privileges can reduce exposure to high-risk driving conditions, thus reducing crash risk while teens’ driving proficiency develops. This report describes the effect of the Checkpoints Program on driving limits and outcomes. Connecticut teens who obtained a learners permit over a 9-month period were recruited, providing a final sample of 3743 who obtained driver licenses. Families were randomized to the intervention or comparison condition. Intervention families received by mail a series of persuasive communications related to high-risk teen driving and a parent-teen driving agreement, while comparison families received on the same schedule general information on driving and vehicle maintenance. Relative to the comparison group, teens and parents in the Checkpoints Program reported significantly greater limits on high-risk teen driving conditions at licensure, 3-, and 6-months post-licensure; and intervention teens reported significantly less risky driving at each reporting period. By the 12-month follow up teens in the intervention group were significantly less likely than those in the comparison group to have had a traffic violation. However, no treatment group effect was found for crashes. This is the first study to report significant effects on teen driving behavior and performance of education designed to increase parental-imposed teen driving limits.