Friday, June 12, 2015

New Teen Driver Research: Many Newly Licensed Do Not Know How to Drive

New research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) published in Injury Prevention offers for the first time a safe way to assess novice teen drivers’ skills in high-risk driving scenarios that commonly lead to crashes. During the 35-minute validated Simulated Driving Assessment (SDA), nearly 43 percent of newly licensed teens (within three months of licensure) had a simulated crash at least once due to making a critical error, and for every additional error, the risk for crashing or running off the road increased by 8 percent.

The study follows more than a decade of foundational research regarding teen driver crashes and over five years of research to create a validated a simulator-based driver assessment that can differentiate between skilled and non-skilled drivers. The SDA can potentially be used to screen and assess for licensure readiness and to guide targeted skill training.

Purchase the study from Injury Prevention