Improving Novice Driver Roadway Hazard Identification Through a Parent-Focused Intervention

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Project Summary Teen drivers are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than adult drivers. Several factors contribute to increased crash risk among novice teen drivers, including distracted driving, inexperience, heightened risk taking, and an underdeveloped ability to identify potential roadway hazards. Potential hazards refer to emerging threats on or near the roadway (e.g., the car in front of you braking suddenly due to a pedestrian darting into traffic) which may or may not evolve into an actual hazard or crash. Experienced drivers quickly identify and respond to potential hazards with little to no effortful cognition. Novice drivers need repeated experience in the perception of hazards to effectively identify and respond to potential hazards, yet fail to develop this skill during the learner phase of licensure. We hypothesize that this experience can be hastened with specific parental guidance. As primary supervisors and teachers during the learner phase of licensure, parents are well positioned to teach their children to identify latent hazards in the driving environment. However, research on driving supervision indicates this type of instruction is almost completely absent. The overall goal of the current project is to improve parental instruction and practice surrounding these events. The first aim of this proposal is to describe parent-teen conversations about hazard identification and mitigation while parents and teens jointly engage in a perceptual/adaptive learning module – a hazard anticipation training program delivered via video. We hypothesize that parents will vary in how they scaffold teens’ ability to correctly identify and perceive hazards according to individual differences in teen temperament, parenting style, and family communication pattern. The second aim seeks to develop a hazard anticipation training program to teach parents to better communicate with their children about identifying potential hazards on the roadway. To this end we will modify an existing training program, designed to help drivers anticipate hazards on the roadway, to help improve parents’ communication related to these events. For the third and final aim, we will test the impact of the intervention in a state-of-the-art driving simulator, the NADS-1. We hypothesize that compared to controls, parents exposed to the intervention will show improved high-order driving instruction - applicable to the current and future driving environment. We also hypothesize that teens of parents exposed to the intervention the will look to and respond to potential hazards on the roadway more quickly and reliably than those assigned to the control. My graduate training in parent-child communication, my MPH which trained me in population-level primary prevention, and my postdoctoral fellowship in simulation research have prepared me to begin this interdisciplinary research. This K99/R01 award will equip me with the necessary training and skills in intervention development, implementation, and evaluation to achieve the aims set forth in this proposal. Additionally, this proposal directly addresses goals set forth by the NICHD strategic plan by assessing and preventing the leading cause of traumatic injury in teens, motor-vehicle crashes.