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Injury
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Checkpoints Program: Improving Parental
Management of the Learning-to-Drive Process
Researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research
Institute will extend their
current research by implementing the
Checkpoints Program, designed to improve parental management of the
learning-to-drive process, in driver’s education classes. The
Checkpoints Program was developed by the National Institutes of
Health with some financial support from CDC. It is the only
intervention of its type with proven efficacy in increasing parental
restrictions on newly licensed teen drivers. The effectiveness of
this intervention will be evaluated by measuring the level of
restrictions that parents place on their teens as they move from
learner’s permit to provisional license to full licensure. The
number of violations and crashes among participating teens may also
be measured.
Increasing Teen Driving Safety: An Enhanced Enforcement and
Social Normative Approach
Researchers at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety
Research Center are implementing two community-based interventions,
one that focuses on enforcement of graduated driver licensing (GDL)
laws and another that evaluates the influence of a peer-led social
normative program on adherence to GDL systems. The effectiveness of
this intervention will be evaluated through self-reports on the
number of passengers, adherence to nighttime curfews, seat belt use,
and perceptions of police enforcement activity. The number and type
of citations issued to young drivers by police officers may also be
measured.
Evaluating a Parent and Teen Driving Safety Program
Researchers at the University of Iowa are studying an educational
intervention for parents of newly licensed teenaged drivers to
increase parental involvement in teaching driving skills and safe
driving behavior. The intervention group will receive a tailored,
in-person intervention with a Traffic Safety Specialist, with
follow-up intervention phone calls at one, three, and six months.
The control group will be a "usual care" group who will receive
driving safety materials available to all new drivers and their
parents. Study findings will show if parents and teens report
improved driving skills and behaviors in the intervention compared
with the control group.
Family Guide to Teen Driving: Improving Family Management of Teen
Driving
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
evaluated the National Safety Council’s Family Guide to Teen
Driving. The Family Guide was a collaborative effort by highway
safety professionals, researchers, community activists, and public
health officials, including CDC, to provide information about teen
driver safety issues and parental management of teens’ driving. The
study assessed the content and use of the Family Guide, strategies
to integrate it into new and existing driver safety programs, and
the degree to which use of the Family Guide impacts family
management of teen driving.
Community-based Intervention to Increase Seat Belt Use among
Teens in Jackson, Mississippi – Meharry Medical College
As part of this cooperative agreement, Meharry Medical College will
evaluate the independent and combined effects of a multi-faceted,
community-wide campaign to increase seatbelt usage among adolescent
motorists ages 15 to 19 in Jackson, Mississippi. The project aims
are to: 1) evaluate the impact of a targeted, school-based,
peer-to-peer, service learning intervention; 2) evaluate the impact
of a comprehensive, community-based, educational and media campaign
to increase youth awareness and usage of seat belts; and 3) compare
study results with other secondary data sets that reflect changes in
teen seat belt use rates.
Conducting Foundational
Research
Surveying Data Sets Related to Motor Vehicle–Related Adolescent
Deaths and Injuries
In January 2006, in collaboration with CDC, RTI International
convened an expert panel to identify and examine 12 widely-used data
sets that provide information related to adolescent motor vehicle
crashes and resulting injuries and fatalities. This panel included
experts in such areas as transportation, health outcomes, insurance
costs, and health care use. Based on the conclusions of this panel
and a review of the literature, RTI International has produced a
report that summarizes the data sets that contribute to our
understanding of the health burden of motor vehicle crashes among
adolescents, critically assesses the strengths and weaknesses of
these data sets, identifies existing linkages that could add to our
knowledge in this field.
Risk and Protective Factors for Traffic Crashes Among Teens
Researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research
Institute are using existing longitudinal data to identify risk and
protective factors related to crashes involving teen drivers.
Information about the psychosocial and problem behavior development
of a large cohort of public school students who were followed from
the 5th through the 12th grade will be merged with their state
driver’s license history records and police crash report records.
The study will identify crashes for which teens are at greater risk
than adult drivers and examine individual psychosocial and
behavioral risk and protective factors that predict the high-risk
crash types among teen drivers. Final study results are anticipated
in spring 2007.
Graduated Driver Licensing Annual Research Update
Graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems phase in unrestricted
driving by allowing beginners to get their initial driving
experiences under low-risk conditions. Most states have enacted some
form of GDL; however, many states lack important provisions such as
nighttime driving and passenger restrictions. As evidence of GDL’s
effectiveness accumulates, there is an urgent need to translate the
findings into a useable form for traffic safety practitioners and
policy makers nationwide. In the past three years, CDC and the
National Safety Council have summarized newly published findings on
the effectiveness of GDL and related teen driver research. CDC
funded the third annual summary, published in the spring 2006 issue
of the Journal of Safety Research.
The International Symposium on Novice Teen Driving: GDL and
Beyond
The National Safety Council, with sponsorship from the CDC, the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the GEICO
Foundation, Nationwide Insurance, General Motors Corporation, and
State Farm Insurance, held the second International Symposium on
Novice Teen Driving on February 5-7, 2007 in Tucson, Arizona. The
goal of the Symposium was to establish a vision for policy and
practices to improve teen driving and current GDL systems.
Scientists from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the
Netherlands presented research findings on teen driving performance,
teen behaviors, effectiveness of GDL laws on crash reduction, the
effects of parenting behaviors on teen driving safety, driver’s
education and how GDL can be improved. More than 100 scientists,
traffic safety advocates and state and federal officials attended.
The proceedings of the symposium will be published in a special
issue of the Journal of Safety Research in spring 2007.
Effects of Graduated Driver Licensing on Hospitalization Rates
and Charges for 16- and 17-year-olds in North Carolina
CDC and State Farm Insurance co-funded the University of North
Carolina School of Public Health and the Highway Safety Research
Center to study the effect of North Carolina’s graduated driver
licensing (GDL) law on hospitalization rates and hospital costs for
16- and 17-year-old drivers. The North Carolina GDL program was
associated with a marked decline in the rate of hospitalizations and
hospital charges for 16-year-old drivers. Following the
implementation of GDL, over $650,000 in hospital charges have been
averted each year for 16-year-old drivers. Analyses suggest these
reductions were primarily the result of reduced exposure rather than
an improvement in teen driving.
Related article:
Margolis LH, Masten SV, Foss RD. The Effects of Graduated Driver Licensing on Hospitalization Rates and Charges for 16-and 17-Year-Olds in North Carolina. Traffic Injury Prevention 2007;8(1):35-38.
Workshop on Contributions from the
Behavioral and Social Sciences in Reducing and Preventing Teen Motor Vehicle
Crashes
CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and State Farm Insurance Companies
co-funded the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine to
conduct a workshop to explore how the behavioral, cognitive, social, health,
and biological sciences could inform prevention strategies to reduce motor
vehicle crash rates and promote responsible behavior among teen drivers. The
summary report can be found at this web page:
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11814.html*
Building State and Local Capacity to Address Teen Driving Issues
Facilitating Partnerships: Transportation and Health Sectors
In collaboration with CDC and other national partners and organizations, the
State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association (STIPDA)
convened a roundtable meeting on teen driving safety on June 21-22, 2006.
STIPDA assembled state injury prevention and transportation experts,
researchers, and national agency representatives to discuss strategies to
reduce teen motor vehicle crashes and resulting injuries and deaths. During
this meeting, state teams shared current activities, strengthened existing
and developed new partnerships, and created draft action plans that will
facilitate implementation of teen driver safety activities in their
respective states. A final proceedings document, including recommendations
and state team action plans, is available at STIPDA’s
website,* along with copies of the
presentations.* Two follow-up webconferences for participating state
teams to provide state action plan updates were held in January 2007.
Healthy States: A Partnership to Promote Public Health
The Council of State Governments will help enhance state legislators’
knowledge about teen driver safety issues and help strengthen their
relationships with one another, CDC, and other federal and state agencies.
The Council’s activities include coordinating a forum on teen driving
safety, publishing a weekly e-mail newsletter, developing and maintaining a
website on injury prevention and control (launched in January 2006), and
producing educational materials, such as a
Graduated Driver Licensing Tool Kit.*
Planning for a Communications Campaign
Teen Safe Driving Campaign
In collaboration with CDC, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide is developing a
national campaign to improve the safety of teen drivers, their passengers,
and other road users. Ogilvy has conducted an environmental scan to identify
past and current programs and campaigns in the field of teen driving and has
developed a communication plan -- which includes input from an expert panel
in June 2006 -- that identifies various target audiences and gaps in the
information that is being provided to them. Upon implementation, this
communications campaign seeks to emphasize the safety benefit to teens of
practice driving with a parent in the car; increase parent’s awareness of
the highest risks for teen drivers; redirect parental monitoring to high
risk behaviors; increase the number of parents who monitor their teen’s
driving; and increase parents’ awareness of graduated driver licensing (GDL)
laws in their state.
* Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.
Please note: Some of these publications are available for download only as *.pdf files. These files require Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to be viewed. Please review the information on downloading and using Acrobat Reader software.
Page last modified: March 27, 2008