Is your teen's car really safe? This video from ABC News contains safety information about the age of the tires on your car....it's about 9 minutes long but you need to watch it and go check your tires for the date of manufacture....The date is molded into the sidewall of each tire!! http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897 It will also make you a more well-informed consumer the next time you buy a set of tires!!
Teen drivers are at high risk for car crashes, especially during their first year of licensure. Providing novice teen drivers and their parents with a means of identifying their good and bad driving maneuvers may help them learn more about how they drive. Those who are more risky may 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 in Tiffin, Iowa (Clear Creek Amana High School). We equipped their vehicles with an event-triggered video device made by DriveCam, designed to capture 20-sec clips of the forward and cabin views whenever the vehicle exceeded lateral or longitudinal threshold accelerations. The first nine weeks established a within-subject baseline; no parental or system feedback was given during this time. After the nine-week baseline, feedback was provided to the participant in the form of a blinking LED light whenever the acceleration threshold was exceeded. In addition, teens and parents were sent a weekly summary of events relative to the study peer group that included video of safety-relevant events. The initial feedback intervention lasted for six months.
The baseline data revealed that participants were divided into two groups: one group of 18 drivers only activated the device 2.6 times per 1000 miles on average; the other group of 7 drivers triggered the system about 23 times per 1000 miles. After the first nine weeks of the feedback intervention, the low-event drivers did not change their behavior significantly—essentially showing a floor effect. However the high-event group showed a 72% reduction in safety-relevant events, averaging 6.4 events per 1000 miles in the first nine weeks of intervention. The interaction between the number of events by feedback phase was significant. After an additional 9 weeks of the feedback intervention, the high-event group dropped their safety relevant events by 89%, averaging 2.6 events per 1000 miles. The two most frequent incident types were improper turning or curve negotiation and abrupt braking. The group has now logged over 300,000 miles of driving—averaging about 40 miles/day throughout the entire study.
The objective of this research is to determine whether use of an event-triggered video system paired with parent feedback in the form of a weekly report card can reduce unsafe driving behavior in teens. 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. This research project is different than other intervention studies because it gives clear, contextual driver feedback in the form of video and audio of the entire event along with a graphical summary of events relative to the study peer group. It is hoped that such feedback will help teen drivers improve their driving for the long-term.
Study funded by a basic research grant by American Family Insurance.
For more information, contact: Daniel V. McGehee Director Human Factors and Vehicle Safety Research Program University of Iowa Public Policy Center 227 South Quad Iowa City, Iowa 52242
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