Peer passengers are bad news for teen drivers
January 25, 2012 By Valerie DeBenedette in Health
Research shows that teens who drive with peers as passengers have increased risks of crashing. Many states have responded by creating graduated driver licensing laws which include limits on the number of passengers teen drivers can have.
Two new studies in the latest Journal of Adolescent Health reviewed key factors shown to influence teen driving behaviors: perception of driving risks, parental monitoring and the presence of peer passengers. Both studies have results that support the role of teen driver licensing restrictions and parental oversight as effective methods to prevent teen driver accidents.
Teen drivers with a stronger awareness of risks and with parents who monitor their whereabouts and set rules engage in less risky driving behavior, according to the first study. A second study showed that teen passengers distract both male and female teen drivers, and are linked to aggressive or illegal driving by male teen drivers. Researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia led both studies.
The first study researched how sensation seeking or risk taking, risk perception and parental monitoring and rule setting affected a teens likelihood of risky driving and driving with multiple peer passengers. The researchers surveyed 198 teens aged 15 to 17 in two states with graduated driver license laws. They found that higher sensation seeking, lower risk perception and less parental monitoring predicted teens risky driving, and having multiple peer passengers increased that risk.
"The good news is that most of the teens in the study reported being aware of the risks of driving dangerously," said lead author Jessica Mirman, Ph.D.
The second study analyzed a nationally representative sample of 677 drivers aged 16 to 18 who were involved in serious crashes. Findings from on-scene crash investigations revealed that both male and female teen drivers were more susceptible to distractions with passengers in the car. In addition, boys with multiple passengers were more likely to drive aggressively or perform illegal maneuvers in the moments before a crash when they had passengers than they were when driving alone.
"Distraction from peer passengers appears to play a prominent role for both male and female drivers," said Allison E. Curry, Ph.D., MPH, director of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Core at the Center and lead author on this study. "One in five females and one in four males who were driving with friends were distracted by something inside the vehicle just before they crashed."
Passengers affected boys and girls in different ways. Boys were more prone to crash due to speeding or reckless driving while girls were more apt to crash because of distractions such as looking at their friends, eating, texting or using their cell phones, said Jeffrey Weiss, M.D., pediatric hospitalist at Phoenix Children's Hospital, and a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics on teen driving issues.
Graduated driver licensing laws vary by state, Weiss said. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia restrict young drivers from driving at night, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Forty-five states and D.C. restrict the number of their passengers. These laws have reduced the incidence of crashes among teen drivers, said Weiss.
"The $64,000 question about graduated driver's licensing rules is, Why do they work? Weiss noted. "We've shown that they work, but is it because of the passenger restriction or the night restriction or a combination of both? Is it because of parental education?" Some of the beneficial effect might be because some teens wait to drive until they can get a full license without restrictions, he added.
More information: Curry A.E., et al. (2012). Peer Passengers: How Do They Affect Teen Crashes? Journal of Adolescent Health.
Provided by
Health Behavior News Service
-
Teen passengers: 'The other distraction' for teen drivers
Jan 24, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Fatal crashes fall among teen drivers
Apr 07, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Teen drivers would benefit from greater restrictions
Jan 14, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Stronger teen graduated driver licensing program show mixed results for involvement in fatal crashes
Sep 13, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Passengers, not just mobile phones, contribute to road accidents
May 22, 2007 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Salt consumption in India: The need for data to initiate population-based prevention efforts
(Medical Xpress)—International researchers are studying the salt intake of Indian adults to provide vital new data to aid the development of a national salt reduction strategy.
Health
53 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
Holding drivers' attention
Each day, an average of nine people are killed in the United States and more than 1,000 injured by drivers doing something other than driving.
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Bed sharing with parents increases risk of cot death fivefold
Bed sharing with parents is linked to a fivefold increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), even when the parents are non-smokers and the mother has not been drinking alcohol and does not use illegal drugs, according ...
Health
12 hours ago |
1.3 / 5 (3) |
0
Many people with implantable defibrillators can participate in vigorous sports
Many people with implantable defibrillators can safely participate in vigorous sports according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
Health
13 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Gym class reduces probability of obesity, study finds for first time
Little is known about the effect of physical education (PE) on child weight, but a new study from Cornell University finds that increasing the amount of time that elementary schoolchildren spent in gym class reduces the probability ...
Health
15 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Anti-CD47 antibody may offer new route to successful cancer vaccination
(Medical Xpress)—Scientists at the School of Medicine have shown that their previously identified therapeutic approach to fight cancer via immune cells called macrophages also prompts the disease-fighting killer T cells ...
Biomarker trio predicts near-term heart risk
(Medical Xpress)—Cardiologists have identified a trio of biomarkers that may predict which patients with heart disease have a high risk of heart attack or death in the next two years.
Primary care docs should play role in kids' dental health, experts say
(HealthDay)—When it comes to the care of your children's teeth, dentists aren't the only experts who can help.
New theory offers clues to vital 'repair and maintenance' role of sleep
(Medical Xpress)—We spend about a third of our life asleep, but why we need to do so remains a mystery. In a recent publication, researchers at University of Surrey and University College London suggest a new hypothesis, ...
Eyes on the sun: Child sunshine exposure and eye development
(Medical Xpress)—Exposure to sunshine as a small child is crucial to the development of a healthy eye according to results of long-term myopia study conducted by University of Sydney researchers.
ATS: Early prone positioning reduces mortality in ARDS
(HealthDay)—For patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), prolonged prone positioning during mechanical ventilation is associated with significantly reduced mortality at 28 and 90 days, ...