Youth resilience education and 13-year motor vehicle crash risk

DRIVE is a prospective cohort study of a large (20,000+) non-representative sample of newly-licensed young drivers in New South Wales (NSW) Australia.1 Its objective is to identify risk and protective factors for motor vehicle crashes (MVCs/“crashes”) by observing sub-group differences over time. A previously-observed protective factor was participation in the NSW Health ‘Reduce Risk – Increase Student Knowledge’ (RRISK) resilience program.2 RRISK brings together Grade 11 students from diverse schools for a one-day, whole-of-community seminar, preceded and followed by multiple peer-led, teacher and parent support activities. It addresses common youth risks, including alcohol, drugs, driving/passenger and partying, empowering students to personalise learning into awareness of their own and their friends’ risk propensities, contributing factors and how to minimise these, including forward planning and back-up strategies. The current research aims were to explore whether crash differences by program participation have persisted over 13 years and any differences by crash type, including severity.