Although distracted driving among teenagers is of great concern to traffic safety professionals and has received considerable media attention in recent years, rigorous research on this issue has been limited. Most of the research to date has concentrated on the risks associated with teen passengers and driver cell phone use. Almost no research has examined the many other potential driving distractions often believed to be common and problematic among teenage drivers. In an ongoing study with the AAA Foundation, we collected a sizeable dataset of video data on teen drivers during the provisional licensing stage of GDL. This in-vehicle data provided a unique opportunity to study distracted driver behaviours and potentially distracting conditions among young, beginning drivers. For the present analysis, we sampled and coded video data with the specific purpose of studying the nature and prevalence of distracted driving among teenagers. The study addressed a number of questions: * Which distracted driver behaviours are most common among teenage drivers? * Do males and females differ in how often they engage in distracted behaviours, or the kinds of distractions they experience? * Do distracted driver behaviours vary based on the number of passengers and the characteristics of those passengers (e.g., teens vs. adults vs. young siblings)? * Are distracted driver behaviours more common during certain times of day or week (e.g., weekday vs. weekend), and do these behaviours bear any relation to the amount of traffic or other characteristics of the driving environment? * Do drivers who engage in distracted behaviours spend more time looking away from the roadway than drivers who are not distracted? * Are distracted driver behaviours associated with serious incidents such as near collisions, or events involving hard braking or swerving? (Author/publisher)
Abstract