What do we know about teen driving?

High quality research can tell us how best to educate teens to become skilled and safe, responsible drivers, and how to ensure that they are prepared for the risks and challenges that they will face on the road.  For some 20 years, the Foundation has led efforts to ensure research drives development of methods and curricula for driver education. 

In 1995 the Foundation took on the perplexing and deadly dilemma of teen driver education and teen crashes, and after careful research, published the Novice Driver Education Model Curriculum Outline, which identified several ways to restructure driver education to realize its potential for improving safety.  Recommendations included:

• Greater use of technology for teaching and testing knowledge and skills in general, as well as hazard identification in particular, in a self-paced, individualized, automated way;
• Greater use of decision-making theory and learning theory to modify risk-taking styles and to demonstrate the consequences of risky decisions; and
• Development of tools, models, and instructional materials to promote parent involvement in driver education.

Since those research-based recommendations were released, few, if any, driver education programs have been successfully evaluated, and it remains unclear what, if anything, works, when educating teens on driving safety.  Extensive evaluation must be pursued to determine how best to educate teens on driving skills, attitudes, and behaviors.

Beyond the generally limited and unevaluated driver education that exists in most (if not all) states, there is also no robust system of testing to ensure teens are truly ready to take their place on the roads.  A typical driver licensing examination is a brief number of multiple choice questions, and a short drive around an unrealistic, minimally-demanding route to demonstrate the most basic of driving skills (e.g., using turn signals, obeying the speed limit, and executing simple maneuvers such as parallel parking).  Neither reflect the real world challenges every driver faces on U.S. roads, and is at best a poor indicator of how a driver will behave.

The Foundation produced an ambitious and effective research report in early 2007 that identified all factors of various graduated driver licensing (GDL) programs in place in the U.S., and clearly indicated what was working to keep teen drivers and other road users safe.  Those recommendations have been well-used at the state level to revise regulations affecting teen drivers and, as predicted, fatality rates have fallen.  However, not all states have implemented each known countermeasure, and additional work can and should be taken in this area to improve road safety.