A recent study by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Companies hones in on the most common errors teen drivers make that lead to a serious crash.
Teen drivers are involved in fatal crashes at four times the rate of adults, according to the study.
Researchers analyzed more than 800 crashes involving teen drivers and identified a few common “critical errors” that are often one of the last in a chain of events leading up to a crash. Seventy-five percent of these crashes were due a critical teen driver error, with three common errors accounting for nearly half of all serious crashes.
Among crashes with a teen driver error:
- Twenty-one percent occurred due to lack of scanning that is needed to detect and respond to hazards.
- Twenty-one percent occurred due to going too fast for road conditions, (for example, driving too fast to respond to others, or to successfully navigate a curve).
- Twenty percent occurred due to being distracted by something inside or outside the vehicle.
The researchers said that environmental conditions, such as poor weather, vehicle malfunction, aggressive driving, or physical impairments such as drowsy driving were not primary factors in most crashes.
“Laws and policies that address distractions by limiting the number of peer passengers and prohibiting cell phone use among novice drivers will help reduce crash rates, but will only address part of the problem,” said study co-author Dennis Durbin, MD, MSCE, who co-directs CIRP. “Many crashes will still occur due to the inability of teen drivers to detect and respond to a hazard in time. Formal teen driver training and parent-teen practice drives should focus on building scanning and hazard awareness skills.”
“This research gets us one step closer to understanding why teens crash and what we can do to help prevent future crashes,” said Cindy Garretson, director of Auto Technology Research at State Farm, who urged graduated driver licensing laws, along with educational programs that are focused on common teen driver errors.
