Can We Improve Teenage Driving?

Few rules set by parents and teens' access to their own cars might increase the risk for a car accident.

Many parents fear the day that their teenagers drive for the first time. Investigators examined the relation between access to a car and parenting style and risk for car crashes in a nationally representative survey of about 5000 students in the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades. General parenting style was determined based on adolescent reports and was categorized as authoritative (high support and high control), authoritarian (low support and high control), permissive (high support and low control), and uninvolved (low support and low control).

Teenagers who reported that they were the main drivers of a vehicle (primary access) were twice as likely to report that they had been involved in a crash during the past 12 months as teenage drivers who r…

Reviewing Author

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)