Young teenaged drivers have a considerably higher accident rate than any other age group. New teenaged drivers have the highest accident rates of any group of drivers. Research has found no clear evidence that traditional high school driver education programs have a positive impact on safe driving. To address this issue, some experts have recommended a multistage training approach in which the traditional training is later supplemented by a carefully designed advanced training program. Such an approach is advocated by the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association (Robinson, 2001) as part of a graduated licensing system in which, "Initial training of novice drivers will provide basic vehicle handling skills and the second training course will provide other safe driving skills, including enhanced decision making to reduce the risk of young drivers." This project is a three-phase effort to evaluate the potential effectiveness of such a multistage program for Montana young drivers. Phase 2 efforts, detailed in this report, concentrated on three major areas, final preparation for training, collection of driving experience data, and the presentation of the training to the teen drivers. WTI's subcontractor, Prof. Fred Mottola, completed development of the training curriculum and schedule. He provided specialized training for the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) cadre of instructors in the presentation of his training curriculum in the classroom and in the vehicles. He provided assistance with the installation and maintenance of the SkidMonster devices on OPI's vehicles. Subcontractor Dr. Jessica Hartos, with the assistance of WTI, developed an ACCESS database for the recording of performance scores for the participants on each exercise and the recommendation of post-training exercises in the form of a "report card". Training was conducted by the Montana Office of Public Instruction. OPI scheduled Lewistown facilities and instructors for 18 one-day sessions during the summer of 2005. Each day, 12 young drivers were scheduled to take the training workshops in Lewistown. WTI contracted with school bus providers for the Great Falls and Billings school districts to provide transportation to and from Lewistown. Students from Harlem were bussed by their High School, which does not contract out its transportation services. Students from Lewistown and the surrounding communities provided their own transportation to the training facility. At the training facility, the young drivers completed a detailed questionnaire concerning their driving experience since completion of drivers' education classes. They then completed approximately 9 hours of instruction in the classroom setting and behind the wheel. At the completion of the day's training, each student received a tailored "report card" concerning their driving performance and exercises they could do on their own to improve it. The half of the teen drivers who were not drawn to take part in the training workshops were mailed survey forms that were identical to those completed by the students at Lewistown. (Author/publisher)
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