Citation

Loeb HS, Kandadai V, McDonald CC, Winston FK. Transp. Res. Rec. 2015; 2516: 8-14.

Affiliation

The Center for Injury Research and Prevention, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 3535 Market St, Suite 1150, Philadelphia, PA 19104, Tel: (215) 590-3118 flaura@mail.med.upenn.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.3141/2516-02

PMID

26709330

PMCID

PMC4690537

Abstract

Motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death in teens in the United States. Newly licensed drivers are the group most at risk for crashes. Their driving skills are very new, still very often untested, so that their ability to properly react in an emergency situation remains a research question. Since it is impossible to expose human subjects to critical life threatening driving scenarios, researchers have been increasingly using driving simulators to assess driving skills. This paper summarizes the results of a driving scenario in a study comparing the driving performance of novice teen drivers (n=21) 16-17 year olds with 90 days of provisional licensure with that of experienced adult drivers (n=17) 25-50 year olds with at least 5 years of PA licensure, at least 100 miles driven per week and no self-reported collisions in the previous 3 years. As part of a 30 to 35 simulated drive that encompassed the most common scenarios that result in serious crashes, participants were exposed to a sudden car event. As the participant drove on a suburban road, a car surged from a driveway hidden by a fence on the right side of the road. To avoid the crash, participants must hard brake, exhibiting dynamic control over both attentional and motor resources. The results showed strong differences between the experienced adult and novice teen drivers in the brake pressure applied. When placed in the same situation, the novice teens decelerated on average 50% less than the experienced adults (p<0.01).

Language: en