“This external link will open in a new window” href=”https://www.research.chop.edu” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) at CHOP have been analyzing factors associated with teen crashes,the #1 cause of death for adolescents, to develop interventions to change behaviors that contribute to these crashes. Findings from a new CIRP study funded by State Farm® and published in Traffic Injury Prevention shed light on how best to target driving safety resources and messages to certain subgroups of teens. “To improve teens’ driving safety behaviors, it’s important to first understand what they believe about road safety,” says Michael R. Elliott, PhD, lead author of the study and a member of the Young Driver Research team at CIRP. “By explaining these beliefs, this paper helps the teen driver research community design interventions that not only reach, but resonate, with certain groups of teens.”
The researchers identified three subgroups of teens-males, minorities, and those who had been injured in a crash-who were more likely to believe that external factors, i.e. not their own actions, were the most likely causes of crashes.
The findings suggest that designing interventions to help certain subgroups of teens understand their role in crashes may help improve teen driver safety. In particular, for those involved in a crash, interventions designed to help them perceive that the crash was the result of their actions, rather than a random or externally-driven event, may influence them to take control with safety-oriented behaviors. Previous CHOP research found that the overwhelming majority (75 percent) of serious teen driver crashes are due to “critical errors” associated with inexperience, including lack of scanning to detect and respond to hazards, going too fast for road conditions, and being distracted by something inside or outside the vehicle.
The researchers at CHOP have been involved in teen safety research for a number of years and helped design the EndDD.org student presentation which more than 40,000 students across the country participated in this Spring. They also developed surveys used with the presentations to gain further information about teen perceptions and behaviors.
Joel Feldman
Joel Feldman is the father of the late Casey Feldman and founder of the Casey Feldman Foundation and its sponsored project, EndDD.org. He has been a practicing attorney for 34 years and a shareholder in the law firm of Anapol Weiss in Philadelphia. He received a masters in counseling in 2013 and speaks throughout the U.S. and Canada to teens and adults, changing attitudes and behaviors through the science based, End Distracted Driving program. Joel also provides death notification training to law enforcement and the medical community. Joel can be reached at [email protected]
