UF hosts nationally recognized experts on teen driving

November 16, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Among American teenagers, the leading cause of death is motor vehicle injury. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control estimate 34 percent of all adolescent deaths result from motor vehicle accidents.

To draw attention to this major public safety problem, the Florida Center for Health Promotion is hosting a lecture at 3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 20, in Room 209 of Emerson Alumni Hall. Two nationally recognized researchers who study adolescent driving behavior will present their latest findings.

Kenneth Beck is professor of public and community health at the University of Maryland-College Park and Bruce Simons-Morton is chief of the Prevention Research Branch in the Division of Epidemiology, Statistics and Prevention Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development/NIH.

Beck and Simons-Morton will present their recent research on adolescent driving practices. They will describe work that uses both observation and intervention to evaluate teenage driving practices and create programs that could help to prevent motor vehicle accidents from occurring.

Simons-Morton currently is assessing teen driving performance using electronic devices installed in vehicles driven by adolescents. He also is evaluating the Checkpoints Program, a program developed by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development that encourages parents to regulate their child’s driving for up to a year after the teenagers first receive their license. Statistically, this is the period of time in which most teenage car accidents occur.

Simons-Morton will describe ways to reduce the risks faced by young, novice drivers. “Newly licensed drivers are at highly elevated risk for crashes, but the cause of this risk is not well understood,” Simons-Morton said.

Beck has studied parental monitoring and supervision of teen driving. His research indicates that many parents are unaware of the risk-taking of their teenage children. Teens’ reports of their involvement in risky driving practices are not concordant with their parents’ reports of their involvement in the same behaviors. “Ways by which parent-teen concordance might be achieved will be discussed,” Beck said.

The lecture is free and open to the public.