The purpose of this project was to implement a peer-to-peer driver's safety program designed for high school students. This project builds upon an effective peer-to-peer outreach effort in Texas entitled Teens in the Driver Seat (TDS), the nation's first peer-to-peer driving safety program run by teens for teens. This program is based on the idea that teens will pay more attention to ideas that are presented by their peers than to those that come from adults. The peer-to-peer traffic safety campaign program empowers high school students to create methods of outreach to their peers. The implementation of this project followed that of the TDS high school program developed by the Texas Transportation Institute, and was assessed using a case-control experimental design across two urban and two rural Montana high schools that included approximately 2,700 students. Results did show some early success in improving teens' awareness of the most dangerous risk factors for teen drivers. Moreover, the program was found to be effective in reaching even those teens in the schools that were not affiliated with the program. These results were more prominent in the rural group than the urban group. However, self-reported driving behaviours did not reflect this change (except for an increase in seatbelt usage). Urban teens reported being influenced most by their peers, closely followed by a parent, whereas rural teens reported being nearly equally influenced by their peers and a parent. Another key finding was that the effectiveness of certain types of peer-to-peer media, such as posters, differed by school size. (Author/publisher)
Abstract