A new study from Virginia Tech reveals that more practice hours during the learner’s permit phase dramatically reduce crash risks for teen drivers. The findings emphasize the importance of supervised driving experiences to improve safety outcomes for novice drivers.
A new study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) shows that increased driving practice during the learner’s permit phase significantly reduces the risk of crashes and near-crashes for teenage drivers.
Published in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, this landmark study is the first to present statistically significant evidence that the quantity of supervised practice hours can lead to a notable decrease in crash risk for young drivers.
By capturing data through four in-car cameras, the researchers monitored 82 teens across both their learner’s permit and first 12 months of independent driving phases over a span of 22 months from 2011 to 2014.
They found that teens who underwent more practice had 30% fewer crash or near-crash incidents.
“Teens that practice driving, especially in a variety of environments, throughout their learner’s permit stage help reduce their crash risk and improve safety outcomes once they are out driving on their own,” lead author Charlie Klauer, a research scientist at VTTI and an associate professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, said in a news release.
The study unveiled that teens with greater supervision faced 12 crash or near-crash events per 1,000 hours of driving, compared to 17 incidents per 1,000 hours for those with less supervision.
The importance of varied and extensive practice was also highlighted, revealing that girls with less diversified driving practice had a higher rate of critical safety events than boys.
Further, teens sharing a family car exhibited fewer risky behaviors in comparison to those with their own vehicles.
This collaborative research, conducted with Johns Hopkins University and TransAnalytics Inc., underlines how enriched supervised driving experiences in diverse conditions — such as nighttime driving and unfamiliar terrains — foster safer independent driving for teens.
Despite these findings, a troubling trend persists: many teens do not meet Virginia’s required 45 hours of permit-phase driving. Such insights make the promotion of thorough driver education and parental engagement ever more critical. As crash fatalities involving young drivers rise — 5,588 deaths reported in 2023, marking a 4.2% increase from 2022 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) — the urgency to bolster safer driving practices could not be clearer.
The study ultimately asserts that enhancing driver education programs and urging policymakers and parents to prioritize supervised driving is imperative to augment the safety of novice drivers. Emphasizing adequate training and diverse driving conditions could lead to significant reductions in crashes, ensuring safer roads for everyone.
Source: Virginia Tech