Young Drivers' Crash Risk, Graduated Driver Licensing and Driver Education

One approach to mitigating novice driver crashes has been graduated driver licensing (GDL). The goal of GDL is to provide experience to novice drivers while limiting exposure to situations known to elevate risk, and research has demonstrated GDL legislation is linked with lower crash rates of novices. Despite the positive effects of GDL, novices are still over-represented in fatal, injury, and property damage only crashes, and the data demonstrate the need for additional efforts to reduce death and injury resulting from novice drivers. Better understanding factors associated with teen drivers' crashes would be useful in tailoring countermeasures, including driver education and GDL laws, to reduce such crashes. This project uses induced exposure analysis to overcome limitations of risk measured as per mile traveled and as a proportion of all crashes. Induced exposure analysis controls for differences in exposure through focusing on two-vehicle crashes in which one and only one driver is recorded as having contributed to the crash; the other driver is thus considered as a control for exposure. This methodology supports comparisons across age groups that are not biased by exposure differences. This project will use crash data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), as well as non-fatal crash data from the General Estimates System (GES), to explore differences in characteristics of young drivers' crashes and those of other age groups over a five-year period. The analyses will document elements that pose particular risks for young drivers and compare the findings to common elements of GDL laws and of young driver education to determine the extent to which the content matches young driver risk. Findings will be useful in evaluating the extent to which current driver education content and GDL recommendations address the types of crashes most common to young drivers.

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $244,761
• Contract Numbers:

  DTNH2216D00010

  DTNH2217F00170

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, D.C.  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, D.C.  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Watson, Christine

• Performing Organizations:

  TransAnalytics, LLC

  336 West Broad Street
  Quakertown, PA  United States  18951
• Principal Investigators:

  Watson, Christine

• Start Date: 20170927
• Expected Completion Date: 20220000
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: Behavioral Safety Research
• Subprogram: Teen Driver

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age groups; Crash characteristics; Crash risk forecasting; Driver education; Graduated licensing; Human factors in crashes; Teenage drivers
• Identifier Terms: Fatality Analysis Reporting System; General Estimates System
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01653840
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Contract Numbers: DTNH2216D00010, DTNH2217F00170
• Files: RIP, USDOT
• Created Date: Dec 18 2017 11:36AM