Teen Safety: Study Shows Parent Conversations Can Improve Driver Safety

Traffic Safety Pulse News

A new study from the University of Iowa College of Public Health that followed 150 families in Iowa over a period of three years finds that the use of video monitoring technology joined with parents talking to their teens about safe driving motivates young drivers to be safer.

In-vehicle video monitoring systems that record speed, direction, g-force, and other factors when teens are driving the vehicle more effectively improve safety for high school drivers when paired with additional communication from parents. When the vehicle exceeds a safety threshold the driver’s parents receive a real-time notification from the in-vehicle monitoring system about the unsafe driving event, some models have systems that record video and/or audio of what is happening inside the vehicle as well.

The Steering Teens Safe program, a parent guide under development by researchers at the College of Public Health, helps parents improve their child’s safe driving skills by providing more focused feedback during a conversation after an unsafe driving event notification from the monitoring technology.

The study found as much as an 80 percent reduction in the chance of future unsafe driving incidents when training parents on how to improve communication with their teenagers about safe driving.

Auto accidents are the leading cause of death for teens ages 15 – 18 in the U.S. with about 3,000 teenagers dying every year in motor vehicle crashes.

The study will be published in the October issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention. It was authored by Corinne Peek-Asa, Cara Hamann, Brandon Butcher, and Joseph Cavanaugh in the College of Public Health and Michelle Reyes at NADS.