Young drivers in Israel, as in other parts of the world, are involved in car crashes more than any other age group. In Israel, a graduated driver licensing (GDL) system has been introduced, which requires all new drivers to be accompanied by an experienced driver whenever they drive for the first three months after obtaining a driving license. In an effort to make the accompanied driving phase more effective, a novel program which targets both young drivers and their parents was initiated. The program administers a personal meeting with the young driver and the accompanying parent scheduled for the beginning of the accompanied driving phase. During this meeting guidance is given regarding best practices for the accompanied driving period, as well as tips for dealing with in-vehicle parent-teen dynamics. More than 70,000 families of young drivers have already participated in the program. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, official crash records (as documented by the police and reported by the Central Bureau of Statistics) of young drivers who participated in the program were compared with crash records of all other license holders at the same time period. The results obtained indicate statistically significant lower crash record for those who participated in the program. (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see E216632.
Samenvatting