Details:

Alternative Title:
J Safety Res
Personal Author:
Jewett, Amy ; Shults, Ruth A. ; Bhat, Geeta
Jewett, Amy ; Shults, Ruth A. ; Bhat, Geeta Less -
Description:
Introduction

Parents play a critical role in preventing crashes among teens. Research of parental perceptions and concerns regarding teen driving safety is limited. We examined results from the 2013 Summer ConsumerStyles survey that queried parents about restrictions placed on their teen drivers, their perceived level of “worry” about their teen driver’s safety, and influence of parental restrictions regarding their teen’s driving.

Methods

We produced frequency distributions for the number of restrictions imposed, parental “worry,” and influence of rules regarding their teen’s driving, reported by teen’s driving license status (learning to drive or obtained a driver’s license). Response categories were dichotomized because of small cell sizes, and we ran separate log-linear regression models to explore whether imposing all four restrictions on teen drivers was associated with either worry intensity (“a lot” versus “somewhat, not very much or not at all”) or perceived influence of parental rules (“a lot” versus “somewhat, not very much or not at all”).

Results

Among the 456 parent respondents, 80% reported having restrictions for their teen driver regarding use of safety belts, drinking and driving, cell phones, and text messaging while driving. However, among the 188 parents of licensed teens, only 9% reported having a written parent-teen driving agreement, either currently or in the past. Worrying “a lot” was reported less frequently by parents of newly licensed teens (36%) compared with parents of learning teens (61%).

Conclusions and Practical Applications

Parents report having rules and restrictions for their teen drivers, but only a small percentage formalize the rules and restrictions in a written parent-teen driving agreement. Parents worry less about their teen driver’s safety during the newly licensed phase, when crash risk is high as compared to the learning phase. Further research is needed into how to effectively support parents in supervising and monitoring their teen driver.


Subjects:
[+]
Accidents, Traffic Adolescent Adolescents Article Automobile Driving Driver Safety Female Humans Male Motor Vehicle Parent Perception Parents Perception Risk-Taking Safety Teen Safety
Source:
J Safety Res. 59:119-123.
Pubmed ID:
27846995
Pubmed Central ID:
PMC5201134
Document Type:
Journal Article
Funding:
CC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States
Collection(s):
CDC Public Access
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:98c91898722a13c60dff6da1a1cd3cbe45ea001b14457d3877fea6156bcfa5f9
Download URL:
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/43580/cdc_43580_DS1.pdf
File Type:

Supporting Files

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