Parents’ and Peers’ Contribution to Risky Driving of Teen Drivers

The current study joins efforts devoted in understanding the role of parents’ personality, attitude, and behavior, and the added contribution of peers into young drivers’ driving behavior during their solo driving period. The study combines data gathered from actual driving of parents and their male teen driver using in-vehicle data recorders, with data collected from self-reported questionnaires completed by the young drivers. The sample consists of 121 families, who participated in the study for 12 months, beginning with the licensure of the teen driver. The experimental design was based on a random control assignment into three treatment groups (with different forms of feedback) and a control group (with no feedback). Findings indicate that the parents’ (especially the fathers’) sensation seeking, anxiety, and aggression, as well as their risky driving event rate were positively associated with higher risky driving of the young driver. In addition, parents’ involvement in the intervention, either by feedback or by training, led to lower risky driving event rate of young drivers compared to the control group. Finally, higher cohesion and adaptability mitigated parents’ modeling for risky driving, and peers norms’ of risky driving were associated with higher risk adopted by the teen drivers. The authors conclude by claiming that there is an unequivocal need to look at a fuller and complex set of antecedents in parents’ personality, attitudes, and behavior, together with the contribution of peers to the young drivers’ reckless driving, and address the practical implications for road safety.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB30 Operator Education and Regulation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Taubman Ben-Ari, Orit
  • Kaplan, Sigal
  • Lotan, Tsippy
  • Prato, Carlo Giacomo
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 13p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Attitudes; Behavior; High risk drivers; Parents; Personality; Recently qualified drivers; Teenage drivers
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01550177
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-2223
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 16 2015 8:29AM