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Improving graduated driver licensing systems: A conceptual approach and its implications
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Journal of Safety Research 38 (2007) 185 – 192 www.nsc.org
Improving graduated driver licensing systems: A conceptual approach and its implications Robert D. Foss ⁎ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Available online 26 March 2007
Abstract Graduated driver licensing (GDL) is a concept for how to transform non-drivers into reasonably safe drivers while minimizing the risks as they learn. Several state GDL programs can be improved by moving their structures closer to an adequate implementation of that concept. The learner stage of a GDL system needs to be long enough for beginners to obtain a thorough introduction to the vagaries of driving. The second or intermediate stage needs to effectively limit exposure to known high risk conditions as novices adapt to being fully in charge of the vehicle. The benefits of GDL to date are due almost entirely to the risk-reducing conditions it implements. To improve the functioning of GDL will probably require a better understanding of teen driving than we presently have. The likelihood of further gains will be enhanced by efforts to learn more about the actual causes of teen crashes, the nature and type of teen driver exposures, and what parents do with their teens during the supervised driving stage of GDL. Without a better understanding of these, and other, phenomena it will be difficult to further reduce crashes among young beginning drivers, whether through GDL enhancements or with other approaches. © 2007 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Graduated driver licensing; Novice drivers; Teen drivers; Young drivers; Traffic safety
1. The GDL concept To determine how graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems can be improved, it is useful to recall the fundamental concept. Doing this will help to organize and distill the implications of the empirical evidence about GDL summarized by Preusser and Tison (2007), Shope (2007) and Williams (2007) in this volume. A conceptual focus can also be useful to groups and individuals working to explain to policy-makers why some enhancements are needed — or why a GDL system is still needed — in their state and how these would benefit young drivers. GDL is unique in the history of traffic safety in the size of the effect it has had on the target group, routinely decreasing crashes among the youngest drivers by 25% or more after it is introduced in a state (Shope, 2007). This success is particularly noteworthy in view of our very limited understanding of teen driving when GDL was first implemented in ⁎ 730 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., CB #3430, Chapel Hill, NC 275993430, USA. Tel.: +1 919 962 8702; fax: +1 919 962 8710. E-mail address: [email protected].
the United States. It is worth pondering why that has been the case, given that most traffic safety initiatives produce far more modest effects, and whether our experience with GDL holds any message for efforts to address crashes in other subgroups or the driving population generally. At the outset it is important to note that GDL is not, in fact, a law, though it is routinely referred to as such. It is not a series of rules, requirements, admonitions or mandates, nor does it entail “getting tough” or “cracking down on teens,” though it often seems to be characterized that way as well. Rather, GDL is a general concept, developed some time ago in an effort to reduce young driver crashes by putting to work what little we knew about them and, more generally, about the ways in which humans learn and how the behavior of entire populations can be influenced. To be sure, GDL is enacted through legislation, but to speak of it as a law misconstrues what it is and how it produces results. Legislation and the detailed requirements describing the licensing system for young beginners are merely the mechanisms by which the concept is implemented. The principle of GDL is simply this: In order to transform non-drivers into reasonably good (i.e., safe) new drivers,
0022-4375/$ - see front matter © 2007 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jsr.2007.02.006
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novices — as a cohort, not merely individuals — should obtain as much practical experience as possible driving in realistic conditions, while simultaneously being protected to the greatest feasible degree from the inherently high risk of crashing attendant to novice driver status. There is, inescapably, a fairly steep learning curve to be traversed by new drivers. So far as we know at present, that can only be achieved by amassing a substantial and varied amount of practical experience. Although there appears to be some promise for several potential enhancements to the way in which new drivers traditionally have been formally trained (cf., Allen, 2007; McGehee, 2007), there is presently little evidence that any kind of education or training other than “just driving,” effectively reduces crash rates (Vernick et al., 1999). The new twist provided by GDL, and a key to its success, is that it foregoes efforts to provide specific, detailed training to individuals. Instead, it attempts to provide substantial protection for the entire novice driver population as needed experience — of the sort known to result in reduced crash rates — is obtained. Rather than trying to educate individuals, GDL uses driver licensing policy to establish a relatively safe, real-world learning environment in which it is hoped that new drivers will learn whatever it is that occurs during the initial months (and years) of driving to bring novice crash rates down fairly dramatically. We do not really understand what that is, but it clearly occurs. Over the course of the first few years of driving, nearly everyone learns enough, about all manner of things, to avoid crashing on nearly every trip. Thus, GDL is a public health or “environmental” approach to reducing novice driver crashes. It seeks to control risk for an entire population through modifying the environment, with the recognition that such a change will affect most individuals (cf. Etzioni, 1972). In this case the environmental modification is a restructuring of the driver licensing system. The GDL approach is predicated on the recognition that individuals cannot quickly learn a complex, multi-faceted behavior that (a) requires psychomotor skills, substantial perceptual ability, quick judgments and appropriate action in view of those judgments and which (b) always occurs in a wide ranging variety of constantly changing environments. Nearly every trip involves numerous physical locations (parking lot, busy road, quiet road, 2 lane local streets, multilane thoroughfares, etc.) and within each of these the immediate environment of the vehicle changes continually as it and other vehicles move. Rather than trying to teach every new driver how to handle all this, GDL takes note of the evidence that with a year or two of experience, most individuals learn to drive reasonably well. GDL merely redesigns the policy environment to make the initial year or two, during which essential learning occurs, safer for inexperienced drivers by specifying the conditions wherein they do their initial couple of years of driving. There is nothing revolutionary about the fundamental notion of slowly introducing individuals to a complex task. The elements of this idea, for drivers specifically, can be
traced back at least to the mid-1920s, although the GDL concept is generally considered to have been developed in the late 1960s (in Canada) and early 1970s (in the U.S.). The idea of using licensing policy to address the safety of the driving environment is, however, rather different from more typical approaches to the behavioral aspects of traffic safety. These tend to focus on influencing each individual directly, with information, educational efforts, or threats of punishment for misdeeds. As GDL has been enacted in most states during the past decade, the general point seems often to have been missed. The result is a plethora of systems that are not as well-designed as they could be. 2. Improving GDL systems In principle, the only way to improve state GDL systems is to ensure that they implement the GDL concept as thoroughly as possible. There are two fundamentally different, but complementary, ways to do that. First, it may be possible to improve the structure of a GDL system that is already in place. Second, the functioning of a GDL system might, hypothetically, be improved. These issues were originally discussed at the 2002 Graduated Driver Licensing Symposium sponsored by the National Safety Council (Foss & Goodwin, 2003), with a focus on improving the structural aspects of state GDL systems. 2.1. Structural adequacy of state GDL systems Although there has been substantial progress in enacting and enhancing GDL systems since the 2002 symposium (McCartt, 2006), many state driver licensing systems in the United States still do not include the most appropriate elements to fully implement the GDL principle. Several lack a passenger restriction during the initial months of unsupervised driving — leaving those teens exposed to a welldocumented high risk condition. Most states' night driving restrictions still begin so late as to provide essentially no protection from the risks attendant to nighttime driving by young teen drivers. Given that the large majority of nighttime crashes among young drivers occur in the hours between 9 p.m. and midnight — concentrating heavily in the earlier hours of that range — an 11 p.m. or midnight restriction addresses only a small fraction of the risk to the novice driver population. The risk per trip is much higher after midnight, but because very little driving by 16 and 17 year-olds occurs during the early-morning hours, the population attributable risk is concentrated in the earlier nighttime hours when the risk per trip is about 3 times higher than during daytime driving and when most nighttime driving by novices occurs (Chen, Baker, Braver, & Li, 2000). In addition to providing sufficient structural protection from known risks for teens as they begin driving unsupervised — the second stage of the licensing process — it is also important to consider whether the initial, learner stage of GDL is adequate. This initial stage is designed to provide
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plenty of practical experience with vehicle handling, roadway characteristics and, especially, with the highly varied and sometimes unpredictable behavior of other drivers. Most states mandate a six-month initial period of supervised driving. A few require even less and some, including my state of North Carolina, require 12 months. I am aware of no evidence to suggest that a 6-month period of supervision is adequate. Reports of parents whose teens are in, or have recently completed the GDL process, suggest that six months may be insufficient. The 6-month standard apparently has been settled on without much consideration. To be fair, as GDL was spreading to states across the U.S., there was little research evidence to address the question of how long the supervised driving stage should last. There clearly are added safety benefits of starting drivers with a 12-month period of supervised driving. The crash risk for supervised teens is extremely low, approximating that of experienced adults (Mayhew, Simpson, & Pak, 2003). Consequently, mandating a full year of supervised driving drastically reduces the likelihood of being in a crash for young teens — both drivers and, to some extent, teen passengers as well. This results both from the lower crash risk per trip and the substantially reduced amount of driving among the affected age cohort. It is not, however, the result of “delayed” or “reduced licensing,” as is often asserted. The effect accrues due to less, and less risky, driving by licensed drivers, because the conditions of the initial licensing period have been successfully altered with exactly that goal — lower risk. Thus, it is conceptually more accurate to speak of altered licensing rather than delayed or reduced licensing. The result is neither a failure nor a weakness of GDL, but rather is part of what it is meant to do — reduce the risks among drivers who are learning. Those who see failure in the evidence that teens licensed through the GDL process have similar crash rates to those licensed prior to GDL, seem not to understand the larger conceptual goal, which is both to protect novices as best we can while they learn and to create safer drivers overall. If the latter has not been achieved, and to date that appears to be the case, it is not a failure. But this shortcoming should be acknowledged and, if possible, addressed. Beyond the axiomatic safety benefits of reduced exposure for an additional 6-month age cohort, there is the additional possibility that a 12-month learner period will provide better experience, resulting in better learning, with exposure to a larger number and greater variety of driving situations. The 12 month duration of the North Carolina learner period was established partly based on opinions of adult drivers who were interviewed as the initial GDL program structure was being developed. It also reflected the admittedly subjective sense that six months is not long enough to realistically expect that most teens can fully experience the vagaries of driving, given that they can only drive when supervised. The notion that a year of supervised practice is appropriate was already reflected in the pre-existing licensing system, which allowed teens to begin supervised driving at
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age 15, but not to obtain an unrestricted license until age 16. Hence, GDL began requiring, rather than merely allowing, 12 months of supervised experience. This was palatable to legislators and parents as well. Subsequent to implementation of GDL in North Carolina, interviews with parents who had recently completed the 12-month learner period of their teen's licensing process indicated overwhelming support for the 12-month period. When directly asked whether they believed 12 months was too long, too short or about right, more than 90% indicated they thought it was either about right, or too short a period. The principle that a full year of supervised driving experience is allowed — and, at least by implication, is desirable — is in place in many states and may provide the basis for extending the learner period to 12 months. 2.2. Improving GDL functioning Beyond ensuring that the licensing structure will implement the fundamental principle of encouraging plenty of practical experience under conditions that are as safe as can realistically be hoped for, there may be opportunities to improve the actual functioning of GDL systems as well. This could involve seeking ways to ensure that the experience obtained is sufficient, or at least the best that is realistically feasible, to promote effective learning by novice drivers (i.e., involving appropriate amounts and variety of practical driving experience). GDL functioning might also be enhanced by adopting mechanisms or developing programs that could increase compliance with the system. It is worth noting that the GDL structure itself can either encourage, or discourage, compliance (Foss & Goodwin, 2003). Requirements considered to be inappropriately extreme by most parents and teens are highly unlikely to be complied with. Some presently recommended elements for GDL systems probably fall into that category (e.g., that the intermediate stage, which may include a zero passenger limit, should remain in effect until teens reach age 18). Presently, most states require teens to obtain, and parents to certify, a certain number of hours of supervised driving during the learner stage of the licensing period. Mandated periods generally range from 20 to 50 hours. Presumably, the intent of such requirements is to ensure that novice drivers will obtain sufficient experience during the learner period. It is important to bear in mind, however, that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that 20, 40, 50 or any other threshold is sufficient to produce safer drivers. These amounts have been selected in essentially the same way that the standard of 30 hours of classroom study was selected for driver education: They seem like a good idea. One study, in Sweden, suggests that young drivers who obtained 118 hours supervised practice did experience lower postlicensure crash rates (Gregersen, 1997). That improvement resulted from more than twice as much supervised driving than is currently required in any U.S. state. And it is important to recognize the distinction between having actually obtained
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a certain amount of experience and merely mandating that teens do so. No study has documented any benefit of mandating a minimum number of hours practice, although the findings of a recent national study of GDL might be mistakenly interpreted to suggest that (Baker, Chen, & Li, 2006). In view of the multiple, complexly and inextricably intertwined elements of GDL systems as they exist, it is probably not possible to do so. Consequently, we might consider whether it's a good idea to set some required minimum, even without any evidence of a benefit of doing so. Interestingly, parental self-report data suggest that teens obtain more than the typically mandated number of hours practice whether they are required to do so (in Michigan; Waller, Olk, & Shope, 2000) or not (North Carolina, Goodwin, Waller, Foss, & Margolis, 2006). Self-report data of this sort must be taken cautiously, since they represent general estimates rather than precise measures, but they do at least suggest that mandating a certain number of hours may not be needed. Given the lack of evidence that mandating a certain number of hours results in teens obtaining either sufficient experience, or even the mandated amount, along with evidence that plenty of practice seems to occur in the absence of a specified minimum, I believe it is worth considering whether such mandates are wise. The function of law extends beyond dictating what individuals must do. An equally, if not more, important function in many instances is its informational value for the public. Laws signify what is considered — presumably by responsible, knowledgeable individuals — important enough to be required (Krawietz, 2001). A mandate that parents provide their beginning teen driver with, say, 25 hours of supervision carries with it the clear implication that 25 hours is sufficient, even if that is not the intent (“Why would they require us to do less than enough?”). Requiring a probably insufficient number of hours experience also bears the misleading implication that “learning to drive” is a relatively simple matter that can be accomplished in a short period of time (barely one full work week), contradicting what we know to be the case. Another concern about requiring a certain number of hours of supervised driving is that it tends to convey the message that novices simply need to accumulate time behind the wheel. Given the lack of evidence for the sufficiency of any set number of hours, along with the other misleading messages such a requirement sends, we might do better by encouraging parents to ensure that their teens obtain a wide range of experience over a long period of time. Since we don't know precisely what occurs to bring crash rates down as experience increases, we should strive to emulate, as best we can, the learning conditions that young drivers experienced prior to GDL. Without question, supervised driving is qualitatively different from unsupervised driving, so the learner period cannot duplicate the learning that novices experienced prior to GDL. However, it should be possible to provide a thorough exposure to the driving environment outside the vehicle. Simply issuing admonitions to parents encouraging them to
do this will, predictably, have little effect. Mandating a long learner period through licensing policy is another, more promising way to encourage teens to obtain wide-ranging experience with the driving environment before they move on to driving without the protective benefits of having an adult in the vehicle. If some numerical threshold of “practice hours” is to be mandated, the requirement should be set at a level for which there is at least a hint of empirical evidence — 120 hours. Large as it may seem, in comparison with current requirements in the U.S., that amount of supervised driving is now required in several Australian states (Senserrick, 2007). 2.3. Parental involvement in teen driver licensing There appears to be a growing consensus among casual observers and researchers alike that a key, if not “the key,” to improving the functioning of GDL systems lies in the behavior of parents (Simons-Morton, 2002). Parents provide behavior models, supervise early driving and can monitor and influence driving once the supervisory stage has been completed. The latter is discussed elsewhere in this volume (Simons-Morton, 2007). With the exception of SimonsMorton's work on parents' management of teen driving beyond the supervisory period, there is little evidence that parents can be influenced to a meaningful degree, at least with the sort of approach typically embraced. Two modest efforts to enhance parents' supervisory activities by providing them with a well-designed, attractive, easy-touse guide have been reported (Chaudhary, Ferguson, & Herbel, 2004; Goodwin et al., 2006). Both indicate that although parents seem to want, and appreciate having, welldeveloped materials to assist them in dealing with their teens' driving, this kind of information has little or no effect on what parents actually do. A sometimes overlooked impediment in efforts to improve teen driving by influencing parents is the inevitable complication inherent in adding another step to the influence process. Working through parents makes a good deal of conceptual sense, but it is important to keep in mind that in practice this is an extremely difficult undertaking. One primary stumbling block for efforts to influence teens' driving by mobilizing parents is the inherent intricacy of dyadic communication. Although we tend to assume that individuals' thoughts are simply encoded perfectly into messages, which are then flawlessly sent and decoded, human communication has been known for several decades to be a good deal more complex, nuanced, emotionally charged and downright defective than that (Berlo, 1960). The result is that what parents may believe they have done or said may well not be perceived by teens to be, or to mean, what the parent thought was conveyed. A few researchers have obtained responses from parents and teens in the same family regarding various parental actions regarding the teens' driving. Although there is general aggregate agreement between parents and teens regarding whether certain things
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were said or done, analysis of intra-familial agreement between parent and teen responses to these items suggest levels of agreement that barely exceed what would occur by chance (Beck, Shattuck, & Raleigh, 2001; Goodwin et al., 2006). An illustration of the complexities of familial communication regarding teen driving can be seen in some of our work with parents and teens. We have recently interviewed parents and teens in the same families, to obtain baseline data for an examination of effects of a recent North Carolina law restricting young drivers' use of mobile communication devices. In what is a fairly typical finding, there is only modest agreement between parents and their teens about parentally imposed restrictions on phone use while driving. In families where the parent and teen agree that they have actually discussed whether teens should use a phone while driving, overall agreement on whether parents have placed restrictions is surprisingly weak. In families where parents report placing restrictions on their teen's phone use, only 76% of teens report there is a restriction. Conversely, when parents report they have not imposed restrictions, 35% of their teens believe there are restrictions. The latter indicates that these differences are not simply self-serving distortions by teens, who might prefer not to “know” about restrictions. Rather this modest degree of agreement simply reflects the vulnerability to misunderstanding that characterizes most human communication. In this case, overall agreement is 74%, which doesn't seem too bad, but simple percent agreement can be a misleading measure of the extent to which two judges or reporters of the same phenomenon assess it similarly. Because percent agreement reflects chance agreement as well as similar judgment, κ is commonly used to measure degree of agreement beyond what would be expected by chance. In this case, the κ value is just .34. κ values of .60 or higher are generally considered to represent “good” agreement (Landis & Koch, 1977). This seeming disconnect between parents and teens in the same families is similar to the notion advanced long ago that husbands and wives see their relationship quite differently, despite being in the same marriage (Bernard, 1972). We should not be surprised that parents and teens also have different understandings. We should, however, be mindful of the difficulties this communication gap presages, as we work to influence parental behaviors with the ultimate goal of affecting teens' driving. In view of the complexity of interpersonal communication, strategies that simply tell parents what they ought to do, by way of informational brochures, slogans, media campaigns or other similarly passive approaches that provide no structural support or environmental “requirement” face daunting odds against their success. 2.4. Whither help? It is not uncommon to find that understanding a phenomenon does not necessarily lead easily to effective interventions to affect it, especially when the target group is a
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large population rather than a small number of individuals (Etzioni, 1972). This may be the case with parenting and teen drivers (Catalano, 2007). Although much is known about parent-teen relations, with the exception of efforts to encourage parents to develop parent-teen driving agreements that proscribe driving in the most dangerous circumstances (Simons-Morton, 2007), little more than issuing general advice or admonitions to parents has been tried. Essentially nothing has, so far, been shown to meaningfully alter how families deal with teens during the supervised driving period in GDL programs. Bleak as that picture appears, it is not necessarily so. Part of the problem may be a failure to take advantage of current scientific understanding of human functioning. Fortunately, there is a substantial body of theoretical-conceptual knowledge, along with extensive research, in several behavioral and social science fields that can provide substantial guidance in developing strategies to improve GDL functioning or otherwise modifying the actions of young teen drivers. Indeed, the one effort that has shown some success in altering parental and teen behavior, was carefully developed drawing on well-established theoretical foundations in the behavioral and social sciences (SimonsMorton, 2007). The attention drawn to the notion of “traffic safety culture” by the recent AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (Kissinger, 2007) initiative stands in stark relief against the rather insular orientation of the traffic safety field. This initiative puts forth several wide-ranging discussions of traffic safety issues — including teen driving — drawing on the conceptual and theoretical resources of disciplines whose well-developed perspectives provide valuable insight into many aspects of human behavior that are both highly relevant and routinely overlooked. Moeckli and Lee (2007) present a discussion of the central role of culture; McKenna (2007) identifies the philosophical underpinnings of a potentially effective program to reduce speeding. I offer some suggestions for how explicit attention to, and use of, well-established theories from a variety of particularly relevant academic disciplines can help us to better understand and, perhaps, affect the behavior of individuals, as well as the groups and institutions that also must play a part in any serious effort to reduce motor vehicle crashes (Foss, 2007). Wish though we might for teen driving issues to be simple, they are not. Although there may be some elegantly simple “solutions,” we cannot realistically hope to stumble upon them without appreciating the complexity of human behavior. The initial benefits of GDL have been achieved based on a few rudimentary principles (reducing risky exposure reduces crashes, lots of practical experience reduces risk given exposure) that have been put in place via the structure of GDL systems. To improve the actual functioning of these systems will necessitate understanding the nature of the phenomena we wish to affect (behavioral compliance, parent-teen communication, complex learning). Ultimately, the goal is to affect teen driving, but the mechanisms by which that is accomplished will involve
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psychological phenomena, interpersonal processes, organizational behavior, cultural and subcultural value systems along with other elements of social structures. Thus, we need to reach well beyond simply understanding teen driver mistakes, knowledge or behavioral dispositions. Keating's (2007) paper in this volume provides a valuable, focused and concise summary of the current state of knowledge regarding adolescent development as it pertains to young, inexperienced drivers. Similar summaries, though they do not presently exist, for numerous other pertinent disciplines would provide equally useful contributions to our understanding of the many, complexly interrelated issues involved in young teen drivers' behaviors and the mechanisms by which they might be altered. We can ignore the accumulated knowledge in other fields of inquiry and hope to be lucky, or we can actively seek to use what is known in these pertinent domains to inform and enhance efforts to address teen driver crash rates. Although the latter would seem to be the rational approach, in a push for quick, easy solutions we seem all too often to opt for the former. 3. Ready, Fire, Aim! — Let's know before we act “It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.” Malcolm Forbes Beyond structurally improving those state GDL systems that currently fail to fully implement the GDL concept, considering our current state of knowledge, it appears that there is little else to be done that can realistically be expected to produce additional safety benefits for young novice drivers (Goodwin, Foss, Mayhew, & Sohn, in press; NHTSA, 2007). Unlike the situation with many other adolescent health domains, the existing research base pertaining to young drivers is distressingly thin, leaving us ill-equipped to take advantage of the current high level of public interest in teen driving. Rather than rushing to enact additional laws or implement additional programs broadly, for which there is little or no empirical evidence, we would do well to devote serious attention to developing a better understanding of the nature of the phenomenon. There are a few areas where immediate and substantial research attention is needed to move us closer to this goal. 3.1. Unknown teen driving exposure Our ability to measure teen driver behavior, and especially teen driving exposure, is presently poor. Consequently our ability to understand the phenomenon, or efforts to affect it, is limited. Lacking good exposure data, we don't know very well how various programs or laws affect either the amount or kind (trip purpose, destination, etc.) of teen driving, nor are we able to make very good sense of crash data to identify risk as distinct from simple exposure. Although it is possible to describe or document some teen driving phenomena, without relevant exposure information it is impossible for us to explain (i.e., to understand). Even a commonly used,
though crude, measure of exposure — the number of licensed drivers — is not available nationally for teen drivers. Although national licensing data are obtained and distributed by FHWA (2006), the failure to adapt this process to take into account the changing nature of licensing among teens in the GDL era has rendered this data base useless for documenting licensing among persons younger than 18 (Ferguson, 2007; IIHS, 2006). Special dedicated studies can help to provide valuable evidence about risk, such as the danger to teens of transporting young passengers (Chen et al., 2000; Preusser, Ferguson, & Williams, 1998). Even the best of those, however, are constrained by weak measures of exposure, relying on relatively crude self-report data or using induced exposure measures that are particularly dubious for the youngest drivers (whose limited ability in avoiding potential danger renders their involvement in “not at fault” crashes disproportionate to their presence in traffic). Self-report measures of behaviors almost always suffer from a lack of any useful “denominator information.” That is, when teens or parents are asked whether they have done something (ignored a restriction, driven too fast, driven after drinking, eaten while driving), we have no idea how many opportunities they have had to do so. Hence, we are hard pressed to know what such reports mean. Moreover, although individuals can, and usually will, answer questions when asked, the veracity of self-report data is far from perfect. Occasionally individuals will distort or deceive, but the much greater problem is simply their inability to provide the kind of information that researchers want and need (Babbie, 2004). Although we can ask, and teens will tell us, how many miles they drove in the past year, we would be more than a little naive to take such reports as anything more than extremely crude guesses (see Goodwin et al., 2006 for an example of where my colleagues and I may have demonstrated just such naiveté!). The current availability of a number of technologies makes it now possible to examine not only the amount, but also the nature, of young drivers' exposure far more precisely than has ever been possible. Ranging from instrumented vehicles for a small number of drivers (Neale, Dingus, Klauer, Sudweeks, & Goodman, 2005), to the ability to track large numbers of individual drivers with GPS and cell phones as they go about their normal activities, to tapping information in on-board computers now available in much of the vehicle fleet, to the possibility of obtaining recorded visual and audio information associated with incidents that reflect potential and actual crashes (McGehee, 2007), we are now on the cusp of having vast amounts of information that will allow us to understand far more than we imagined barely 10 years ago. However, until studies to obtain these kinds of data are funded and completed, we will remain substantially blind to the phenomenon we hope to influence. In addition to providing much-needed information about teen driver exposure, modern technologies also hold the promise of substantially enhancing our understanding of teen crash causation. Crash report data have been enormously
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helpful, but they are inherently limited. Beyond the institutionalized weaknesses of these systems (e.g., failure to include information about non-injured passengers, lack of information about non-injury crashes), some of the potentially most valuable information represent defective measurement. Information about what transpired in a vehicle that perhaps, but not necessarily, led to a crash is obtained by self-report. Beyond the obviously self-serving motivations sometimes invoked (e.g., when reporting belt use, drinking, or foolish though perhaps legal actions), humans are not particularly astute in observing or adept in identifying crash causation. Crashes often result from a confluence of factors, but individuals tend to settle on single-factor explanations. Moreover, the well-known “fundamental attribution error” — the tendency of humans to overemphasize individual traits, rather than environmental conditions or exigencies, as the cause of behaviors — along with other common interpretive biases lead to far less than perfect reports by drivers and investigating officers alike about what may have “caused” a crash (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Ross, 1977). Julian Waller (1985) noted long ago that the nature of crash report forms themselves inadvertently biases what is reported, hence concluded, about crash causation. Video information obtained in the “Naturalistic driving study” (Dingus, 2007; Neale et al., 2005) clearly illustrates instances of driver actions and conditions that sometimes contribute to crashes, but which would not appear in crash reports. 3.2. Understanding parents Although it is clear that teens don't often crash when supervised, we presently have no idea what parents are doing during the first, critical phase of GDL when only supervised driving is allowed. Hence, we have little basis for suggesting what should be done, or why, or how to improve the learning experience. We don't know if parents are transmitting bad driving habits — some observers fear that is the case — or whether they are more conscientious when supervising their teen than when “just driving” themselves. We don't know if they need help, want help, or how effectively to provide the help or support they might want or need. It seems overly ambitious, if not completely delusional, to believe that we could ever expect parents to emulate the behavior of driving instructors. Fortunately, that's probably not necessary for parents to provide valuable “guided experience.” Until we develop a body of literature clearly delineating how parents deal with the learner period of GDL, we will be seriously handicapped in improving the functioning of that part of GDL, or knowing whether improvement is possible, or even needed. We think there is such a need, but at present there is little beyond anecdotal evidence to suggest that is so. With the assistance of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, we have begun one small attempt in North Carolina to begin understanding how parents deal with this part of their teen's licensing. We hope to glean some inkling of what's going on, but many more studies, by other researchers in locations that
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reflect varying driving conditions, populations and licensing rules will be needed. The discussions currently taking place in several states concerning the need to require every teen to take a driver education class and to require driver education classes to follow uniform standards are unlikely to produce the expected benefits. These efforts represent a substantial disconnect between beliefs of the general public and members of the teen driver research community. Although there is substantial promise that we may find ways to improve the training of young drivers, widespread implementation of current promising approaches is premature. A concerted effort is needed to fill in both our basic understanding of teen driving and to address the more applied question of how we might actually reduce those risks through a scientifically grounded approach to training. 4. Summary If there are practically feasible ways to enhance the structure of GDL systems to put in place the basic principles, then those certainly should be done in all states. And if we can find ways to improve the functioning of the elements that are in place, we should do that as well. What we should not do is to continue tinkering with GDL systems, adding bits and pieces that have little or nothing to do with the basic concept. Additional reductions in young driver crash rates clearly are to be desired, but in principle, tinkering further with GDL systems probably holds little promise of achieving those gains until we have a better understanding of teen driving. The clear message from GDL so far is that efforts that manage to reduce exposure, or risky exposure, reliably reduce young driver crashes. That there appears to be relatively little reduction in crash risks once teens move beyond the licensing stages that involve protective restrictions may be because we still know so little about young, beginning drivers. Or it may simply be that the relevant behaviors are so difficult to change that the amount of educating, threatening, coaching, pleading or demanding that can feasibly be implemented for the entire population of new drivers will never be able to bring about measurable changes. At present, evidence for the benefits of anything besides reducing exposure is rather thin. However, this may be more because few serious efforts have been mounted and carefully evaluated. In view of the substantial increase in attention to the continuing high crash rates among novice drivers we are now seeing, we can look forward to having a good deal more solid research and evaluation data to draw on in the coming years. Acknowledgment I greatly appreciate the efforts of Arthur Goodwin, who read and commented on an earlier draft, to impart some sense of coherence and clarity to this paper. It was a daunting task.
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References Allen, W. (2007). Accident Rates of Novice Drivers with Simulator Training. Presented in Transportation Research Board Human Factors Workshop 143, Teen Driving: Simulation, Other Technologies, and Knowledge Advancements for Training Novice Drivers. Washington DC (January 21). http://ppc.uiowa.edu/novicedriverworkshop143 Babbie, E. R. (2004). The Practice of Social Research (10th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Baker, S. P., Chen, L. H., & Li, G. (2006). National Evaluation of Graduated Driver Licensing Programs, DOT HS 810 614. Washington DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Beck, K. H., Shattuck, T., & Raleigh, R. (2001). A comparison of teen perceptions and parental reports of influence on driving risk. American Journal of Health Behavior, 25, 376−387. Berlo, D. (1960). The Process of Communication. New York: Holt. Bernard, J. (1972). The Future of Marriage. New York: Bantam Books. Catalano, R. (2007). Paper presented at Novice teen driving: GDL and Beyond Research Foundation for Policy and Practice Symposium. Chaudhary, N. K., Ferguson, S. A., & Herbel, S. B. (2004). Tennessee's novice driver safety project: A program to increase parental involvement. Traffic Injury Prevention, 5, 356−361. Chen, L., Baker, S. P., Braver, E. R., & Li, G. (2000). Carrying passengers as a risk factor for crashes fatal to 16- and 17-year-old drivers. Journal of the American Medical Association, 283, 1578−1617. Dingus, T. (2007). A dose of reality: Videos of teen driving behavior. Paper presented at Novice teen driving: GDL and Beyond Research Foundation for Policy and Practice Symposium. Etzioni, A. (1972, June 3). Human beings are not very easy to change after all. Saturday Review, 45−47 (http://www.amitaietzioni.org/documents/ B067.pdf). Federal Highway Administration [FHWA]. (2006). Highway Statistics 2005. Washington DC: Author. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ohpi/hss/index.htm Ferguson, S. (2007). Progress in teenage crash risk during the last decade. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Foss, R. D. (2007). Addressing behavioral elements in traffic safety: A recommended approach. Improving traffic safety culture in the U.S.: The journey forward. Washington DC: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Foss, R., & Goodwin, A. (2003). Enhancing the effectiveness of graduated driver licensing legislation. Journal of Safety Research, 34(1), 79−84 (www.nsc.org/gdlsym/index.htm). Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21−38. Goodwin, A. H., Foss, R. D., Mayhew, D., & Sohn, J. (in press). A Guide for Reducing Young Driver Collisions. Guidance for Implementation of the AASHTO Strategic Highway Safety Plan. NCHRP Report 500. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board. Goodwin, A. H., Waller, M. W., Foss, R. D., & Margolis, L. H. (2006). Parental Supervision of Teenage Drivers in a Graduated Licensing System. Traffic Injury Prevention, 7(3), 224−231. Gregersen, N. P. (1997). Evaluation of 16-years age limit for driver training (VTI report 418A). Linkoping, Sweden: Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety [IIHS]. (2006). Unreliability of FHWA licensure data causes institute to stop use. Status Report, 41(5), 6. Keating, D. (2007). Understanding Adolescent Development: Implications for Driving Safety. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Kissinger, J. P. (2007). Preface. Improving traffic safety culture in the U.S.: The journey forward. Washington DC: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Krawietz, W. (2001). The concept of law revised — Directives and norms in the perspectives of a new legal realism. Ratio Juris, 14(1), 34−46. Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The Measurement of Observer Agreement for Categorical Data. Biometrics, 33, 159−174. Mayhew, D. R., Simpson, H. M., & Pak, A. (2003). Changes in collision rates among novice drivers during the first months of driving. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 35, 683−691.
McCartt, A. (2006). IOM report. Teen crash risks addressed by laws and regulations. Presented at Workshop on Contributions from the Behavioral and Social Sciences in Reducing and Preventing Teen Motor Crashes. Washington DC: National Research Council. May 15. http://www.bocyf.org/mccartt_presentation.pdf McGehee, D. (2007). TRB workshop. Pilot examination of an eventtriggered video intervention on rural teen driving. Presented in Transportation Research Board Human Factors Workshop 143, Teen Driving: Simulation, Other Technologies, and Knowledge Advancements for Training Novice Drivers. Washington DC (January 21). http:// ppc.uiowa.edu/novicedriverworkshop143 McKenna, F. (2007). The perceived legitimacy of intervention: A key feature of road safety. Improving traffic safety culture in the U.S.: The journey forward. AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Moeckli, J., & Lee, J. D. (2007). The making of driving cultures. Improving traffic safety culture in the U.S.: The journey forward. Washington, DC: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Neale, V. L., Dingus, T. A., Klauer, S. G., Sudweeks, J., & Goodman, M. (2005). An overview of the 100-car naturalistic study and findings. Washington DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-12/100Car_ESV05summary.pdf National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA]. (2007). Countermeasures that work: A highway safety countermeasure guide for state highway safety offices, 2nd Edition. Washington DC: Dept. of Transportation DOT HS 810 710. http://ghsa.org/html/publications/ pdf/CountermeasuresThatWork_2007.pdf Preusser, D. F., Ferguson, S. A., & Williams, A. F. (1998). The effect of teenage passengers on the fatal crash risk of teenage drivers. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 30(2), 217−222. Preusser, D. F., & Tison, J. (2007). GDL Then and Now. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 10 (pp. 173-220). New York: Academic Press. Senserrick, T. (2007). Driver education and training in Australia. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Shope, J. T. (2007). Graduated driver licensing: Evaluation results since the November 2002 Symposium. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Simons-Morton, B. (2002). Reducing young driver crash risk. Injury Prevention, 8, ii1−ii2. doi:10.1136/ip.8.suppl_2.ii1 Simons-Morton, B. (2007). Parent involvement in novice teen driving: Rationale, evidence of effects, and potential for enhancing graduated driver licensing effectiveness. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Waller, J. A. (1985). Injury control. A guide to the causes and prevention of trauma. Lexington MA: Lexington Press. Waller, P. F., Olk, M. L., & Shope, J. T. (2000). Parental views of and experience with Michigan's graduated licensing program. Journal of Safety Research, 31(1), 9−15. Williams, A. F. (2007). Contribution of the Components of Graduated Licensing to Crash Reductions. Journal of Safety Research, 38(2). Vernick, J. S., Li, G., Ogaitis, S., MacKenzie, E. J., Baker, S. P., & Gielen, A. C. (1999). Effects of high school driver education on motor vehicle crashes, violations, and licensure. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 16(1S). 40−46 (www.oshweb.com/s/AFRT-542JXK-01). Robert Foss, PhD, a Social Psychologist, is a Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Center for the Study of Young Drivers at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. Prior to joining HSRC he taught research methods, data analysis and social psychology for more than 20 years. He and his research team designed the North Carolina and Delaware Graduated Driver Licensing systems, and have assisted numerous other states in formulating their GDL programs. They continue to study the causes of young driver crashes, the long term effects of graduated licensing programs and the nature of parent-teen interactions concerning driving in the wake of graduated licensing.
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Improving graduated driver licensing systems: A conceptual approach and its implications Robert D. Foss ⁎ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Available online 26 March 2007
Abstract Graduated driver licensing (GDL) is a concept for how to transform non-drivers into reasonably safe drivers while minimizing the risks as they learn. Several state GDL programs can be improved by moving their structures closer to an adequate implementation of that concept. The learner stage of a GDL system needs to be long enough for beginners to obtain a thorough introduction to the vagaries of driving. The second or intermediate stage needs to effectively limit exposure to known high risk conditions as novices adapt to being fully in charge of the vehicle. The benefits of GDL to date are due almost entirely to the risk-reducing conditions it implements. To improve the functioning of GDL will probably require a better understanding of teen driving than we presently have. The likelihood of further gains will be enhanced by efforts to learn more about the actual causes of teen crashes, the nature and type of teen driver exposures, and what parents do with their teens during the supervised driving stage of GDL. Without a better understanding of these, and other, phenomena it will be difficult to further reduce crashes among young beginning drivers, whether through GDL enhancements or with other approaches. © 2007 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Graduated driver licensing; Novice drivers; Teen drivers; Young drivers; Traffic safety
1. The GDL concept To determine how graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems can be improved, it is useful to recall the fundamental concept. Doing this will help to organize and distill the implications of the empirical evidence about GDL summarized by Preusser and Tison (2007), Shope (2007) and Williams (2007) in this volume. A conceptual focus can also be useful to groups and individuals working to explain to policy-makers why some enhancements are needed — or why a GDL system is still needed — in their state and how these would benefit young drivers. GDL is unique in the history of traffic safety in the size of the effect it has had on the target group, routinely decreasing crashes among the youngest drivers by 25% or more after it is introduced in a state (Shope, 2007). This success is particularly noteworthy in view of our very limited understanding of teen driving when GDL was first implemented in ⁎ 730 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., CB #3430, Chapel Hill, NC 275993430, USA. Tel.: +1 919 962 8702; fax: +1 919 962 8710. E-mail address: [email protected].
the United States. It is worth pondering why that has been the case, given that most traffic safety initiatives produce far more modest effects, and whether our experience with GDL holds any message for efforts to address crashes in other subgroups or the driving population generally. At the outset it is important to note that GDL is not, in fact, a law, though it is routinely referred to as such. It is not a series of rules, requirements, admonitions or mandates, nor does it entail “getting tough” or “cracking down on teens,” though it often seems to be characterized that way as well. Rather, GDL is a general concept, developed some time ago in an effort to reduce young driver crashes by putting to work what little we knew about them and, more generally, about the ways in which humans learn and how the behavior of entire populations can be influenced. To be sure, GDL is enacted through legislation, but to speak of it as a law misconstrues what it is and how it produces results. Legislation and the detailed requirements describing the licensing system for young beginners are merely the mechanisms by which the concept is implemented. The principle of GDL is simply this: In order to transform non-drivers into reasonably good (i.e., safe) new drivers,
0022-4375/$ - see front matter © 2007 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jsr.2007.02.006
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novices — as a cohort, not merely individuals — should obtain as much practical experience as possible driving in realistic conditions, while simultaneously being protected to the greatest feasible degree from the inherently high risk of crashing attendant to novice driver status. There is, inescapably, a fairly steep learning curve to be traversed by new drivers. So far as we know at present, that can only be achieved by amassing a substantial and varied amount of practical experience. Although there appears to be some promise for several potential enhancements to the way in which new drivers traditionally have been formally trained (cf., Allen, 2007; McGehee, 2007), there is presently little evidence that any kind of education or training other than “just driving,” effectively reduces crash rates (Vernick et al., 1999). The new twist provided by GDL, and a key to its success, is that it foregoes efforts to provide specific, detailed training to individuals. Instead, it attempts to provide substantial protection for the entire novice driver population as needed experience — of the sort known to result in reduced crash rates — is obtained. Rather than trying to educate individuals, GDL uses driver licensing policy to establish a relatively safe, real-world learning environment in which it is hoped that new drivers will learn whatever it is that occurs during the initial months (and years) of driving to bring novice crash rates down fairly dramatically. We do not really understand what that is, but it clearly occurs. Over the course of the first few years of driving, nearly everyone learns enough, about all manner of things, to avoid crashing on nearly every trip. Thus, GDL is a public health or “environmental” approach to reducing novice driver crashes. It seeks to control risk for an entire population through modifying the environment, with the recognition that such a change will affect most individuals (cf. Etzioni, 1972). In this case the environmental modification is a restructuring of the driver licensing system. The GDL approach is predicated on the recognition that individuals cannot quickly learn a complex, multi-faceted behavior that (a) requires psychomotor skills, substantial perceptual ability, quick judgments and appropriate action in view of those judgments and which (b) always occurs in a wide ranging variety of constantly changing environments. Nearly every trip involves numerous physical locations (parking lot, busy road, quiet road, 2 lane local streets, multilane thoroughfares, etc.) and within each of these the immediate environment of the vehicle changes continually as it and other vehicles move. Rather than trying to teach every new driver how to handle all this, GDL takes note of the evidence that with a year or two of experience, most individuals learn to drive reasonably well. GDL merely redesigns the policy environment to make the initial year or two, during which essential learning occurs, safer for inexperienced drivers by specifying the conditions wherein they do their initial couple of years of driving. There is nothing revolutionary about the fundamental notion of slowly introducing individuals to a complex task. The elements of this idea, for drivers specifically, can be
traced back at least to the mid-1920s, although the GDL concept is generally considered to have been developed in the late 1960s (in Canada) and early 1970s (in the U.S.). The idea of using licensing policy to address the safety of the driving environment is, however, rather different from more typical approaches to the behavioral aspects of traffic safety. These tend to focus on influencing each individual directly, with information, educational efforts, or threats of punishment for misdeeds. As GDL has been enacted in most states during the past decade, the general point seems often to have been missed. The result is a plethora of systems that are not as well-designed as they could be. 2. Improving GDL systems In principle, the only way to improve state GDL systems is to ensure that they implement the GDL concept as thoroughly as possible. There are two fundamentally different, but complementary, ways to do that. First, it may be possible to improve the structure of a GDL system that is already in place. Second, the functioning of a GDL system might, hypothetically, be improved. These issues were originally discussed at the 2002 Graduated Driver Licensing Symposium sponsored by the National Safety Council (Foss & Goodwin, 2003), with a focus on improving the structural aspects of state GDL systems. 2.1. Structural adequacy of state GDL systems Although there has been substantial progress in enacting and enhancing GDL systems since the 2002 symposium (McCartt, 2006), many state driver licensing systems in the United States still do not include the most appropriate elements to fully implement the GDL principle. Several lack a passenger restriction during the initial months of unsupervised driving — leaving those teens exposed to a welldocumented high risk condition. Most states' night driving restrictions still begin so late as to provide essentially no protection from the risks attendant to nighttime driving by young teen drivers. Given that the large majority of nighttime crashes among young drivers occur in the hours between 9 p.m. and midnight — concentrating heavily in the earlier hours of that range — an 11 p.m. or midnight restriction addresses only a small fraction of the risk to the novice driver population. The risk per trip is much higher after midnight, but because very little driving by 16 and 17 year-olds occurs during the early-morning hours, the population attributable risk is concentrated in the earlier nighttime hours when the risk per trip is about 3 times higher than during daytime driving and when most nighttime driving by novices occurs (Chen, Baker, Braver, & Li, 2000). In addition to providing sufficient structural protection from known risks for teens as they begin driving unsupervised — the second stage of the licensing process — it is also important to consider whether the initial, learner stage of GDL is adequate. This initial stage is designed to provide
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plenty of practical experience with vehicle handling, roadway characteristics and, especially, with the highly varied and sometimes unpredictable behavior of other drivers. Most states mandate a six-month initial period of supervised driving. A few require even less and some, including my state of North Carolina, require 12 months. I am aware of no evidence to suggest that a 6-month period of supervision is adequate. Reports of parents whose teens are in, or have recently completed the GDL process, suggest that six months may be insufficient. The 6-month standard apparently has been settled on without much consideration. To be fair, as GDL was spreading to states across the U.S., there was little research evidence to address the question of how long the supervised driving stage should last. There clearly are added safety benefits of starting drivers with a 12-month period of supervised driving. The crash risk for supervised teens is extremely low, approximating that of experienced adults (Mayhew, Simpson, & Pak, 2003). Consequently, mandating a full year of supervised driving drastically reduces the likelihood of being in a crash for young teens — both drivers and, to some extent, teen passengers as well. This results both from the lower crash risk per trip and the substantially reduced amount of driving among the affected age cohort. It is not, however, the result of “delayed” or “reduced licensing,” as is often asserted. The effect accrues due to less, and less risky, driving by licensed drivers, because the conditions of the initial licensing period have been successfully altered with exactly that goal — lower risk. Thus, it is conceptually more accurate to speak of altered licensing rather than delayed or reduced licensing. The result is neither a failure nor a weakness of GDL, but rather is part of what it is meant to do — reduce the risks among drivers who are learning. Those who see failure in the evidence that teens licensed through the GDL process have similar crash rates to those licensed prior to GDL, seem not to understand the larger conceptual goal, which is both to protect novices as best we can while they learn and to create safer drivers overall. If the latter has not been achieved, and to date that appears to be the case, it is not a failure. But this shortcoming should be acknowledged and, if possible, addressed. Beyond the axiomatic safety benefits of reduced exposure for an additional 6-month age cohort, there is the additional possibility that a 12-month learner period will provide better experience, resulting in better learning, with exposure to a larger number and greater variety of driving situations. The 12 month duration of the North Carolina learner period was established partly based on opinions of adult drivers who were interviewed as the initial GDL program structure was being developed. It also reflected the admittedly subjective sense that six months is not long enough to realistically expect that most teens can fully experience the vagaries of driving, given that they can only drive when supervised. The notion that a year of supervised practice is appropriate was already reflected in the pre-existing licensing system, which allowed teens to begin supervised driving at
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age 15, but not to obtain an unrestricted license until age 16. Hence, GDL began requiring, rather than merely allowing, 12 months of supervised experience. This was palatable to legislators and parents as well. Subsequent to implementation of GDL in North Carolina, interviews with parents who had recently completed the 12-month learner period of their teen's licensing process indicated overwhelming support for the 12-month period. When directly asked whether they believed 12 months was too long, too short or about right, more than 90% indicated they thought it was either about right, or too short a period. The principle that a full year of supervised driving experience is allowed — and, at least by implication, is desirable — is in place in many states and may provide the basis for extending the learner period to 12 months. 2.2. Improving GDL functioning Beyond ensuring that the licensing structure will implement the fundamental principle of encouraging plenty of practical experience under conditions that are as safe as can realistically be hoped for, there may be opportunities to improve the actual functioning of GDL systems as well. This could involve seeking ways to ensure that the experience obtained is sufficient, or at least the best that is realistically feasible, to promote effective learning by novice drivers (i.e., involving appropriate amounts and variety of practical driving experience). GDL functioning might also be enhanced by adopting mechanisms or developing programs that could increase compliance with the system. It is worth noting that the GDL structure itself can either encourage, or discourage, compliance (Foss & Goodwin, 2003). Requirements considered to be inappropriately extreme by most parents and teens are highly unlikely to be complied with. Some presently recommended elements for GDL systems probably fall into that category (e.g., that the intermediate stage, which may include a zero passenger limit, should remain in effect until teens reach age 18). Presently, most states require teens to obtain, and parents to certify, a certain number of hours of supervised driving during the learner stage of the licensing period. Mandated periods generally range from 20 to 50 hours. Presumably, the intent of such requirements is to ensure that novice drivers will obtain sufficient experience during the learner period. It is important to bear in mind, however, that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that 20, 40, 50 or any other threshold is sufficient to produce safer drivers. These amounts have been selected in essentially the same way that the standard of 30 hours of classroom study was selected for driver education: They seem like a good idea. One study, in Sweden, suggests that young drivers who obtained 118 hours supervised practice did experience lower postlicensure crash rates (Gregersen, 1997). That improvement resulted from more than twice as much supervised driving than is currently required in any U.S. state. And it is important to recognize the distinction between having actually obtained
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a certain amount of experience and merely mandating that teens do so. No study has documented any benefit of mandating a minimum number of hours practice, although the findings of a recent national study of GDL might be mistakenly interpreted to suggest that (Baker, Chen, & Li, 2006). In view of the multiple, complexly and inextricably intertwined elements of GDL systems as they exist, it is probably not possible to do so. Consequently, we might consider whether it's a good idea to set some required minimum, even without any evidence of a benefit of doing so. Interestingly, parental self-report data suggest that teens obtain more than the typically mandated number of hours practice whether they are required to do so (in Michigan; Waller, Olk, & Shope, 2000) or not (North Carolina, Goodwin, Waller, Foss, & Margolis, 2006). Self-report data of this sort must be taken cautiously, since they represent general estimates rather than precise measures, but they do at least suggest that mandating a certain number of hours may not be needed. Given the lack of evidence that mandating a certain number of hours results in teens obtaining either sufficient experience, or even the mandated amount, along with evidence that plenty of practice seems to occur in the absence of a specified minimum, I believe it is worth considering whether such mandates are wise. The function of law extends beyond dictating what individuals must do. An equally, if not more, important function in many instances is its informational value for the public. Laws signify what is considered — presumably by responsible, knowledgeable individuals — important enough to be required (Krawietz, 2001). A mandate that parents provide their beginning teen driver with, say, 25 hours of supervision carries with it the clear implication that 25 hours is sufficient, even if that is not the intent (“Why would they require us to do less than enough?”). Requiring a probably insufficient number of hours experience also bears the misleading implication that “learning to drive” is a relatively simple matter that can be accomplished in a short period of time (barely one full work week), contradicting what we know to be the case. Another concern about requiring a certain number of hours of supervised driving is that it tends to convey the message that novices simply need to accumulate time behind the wheel. Given the lack of evidence for the sufficiency of any set number of hours, along with the other misleading messages such a requirement sends, we might do better by encouraging parents to ensure that their teens obtain a wide range of experience over a long period of time. Since we don't know precisely what occurs to bring crash rates down as experience increases, we should strive to emulate, as best we can, the learning conditions that young drivers experienced prior to GDL. Without question, supervised driving is qualitatively different from unsupervised driving, so the learner period cannot duplicate the learning that novices experienced prior to GDL. However, it should be possible to provide a thorough exposure to the driving environment outside the vehicle. Simply issuing admonitions to parents encouraging them to
do this will, predictably, have little effect. Mandating a long learner period through licensing policy is another, more promising way to encourage teens to obtain wide-ranging experience with the driving environment before they move on to driving without the protective benefits of having an adult in the vehicle. If some numerical threshold of “practice hours” is to be mandated, the requirement should be set at a level for which there is at least a hint of empirical evidence — 120 hours. Large as it may seem, in comparison with current requirements in the U.S., that amount of supervised driving is now required in several Australian states (Senserrick, 2007). 2.3. Parental involvement in teen driver licensing There appears to be a growing consensus among casual observers and researchers alike that a key, if not “the key,” to improving the functioning of GDL systems lies in the behavior of parents (Simons-Morton, 2002). Parents provide behavior models, supervise early driving and can monitor and influence driving once the supervisory stage has been completed. The latter is discussed elsewhere in this volume (Simons-Morton, 2007). With the exception of SimonsMorton's work on parents' management of teen driving beyond the supervisory period, there is little evidence that parents can be influenced to a meaningful degree, at least with the sort of approach typically embraced. Two modest efforts to enhance parents' supervisory activities by providing them with a well-designed, attractive, easy-touse guide have been reported (Chaudhary, Ferguson, & Herbel, 2004; Goodwin et al., 2006). Both indicate that although parents seem to want, and appreciate having, welldeveloped materials to assist them in dealing with their teens' driving, this kind of information has little or no effect on what parents actually do. A sometimes overlooked impediment in efforts to improve teen driving by influencing parents is the inevitable complication inherent in adding another step to the influence process. Working through parents makes a good deal of conceptual sense, but it is important to keep in mind that in practice this is an extremely difficult undertaking. One primary stumbling block for efforts to influence teens' driving by mobilizing parents is the inherent intricacy of dyadic communication. Although we tend to assume that individuals' thoughts are simply encoded perfectly into messages, which are then flawlessly sent and decoded, human communication has been known for several decades to be a good deal more complex, nuanced, emotionally charged and downright defective than that (Berlo, 1960). The result is that what parents may believe they have done or said may well not be perceived by teens to be, or to mean, what the parent thought was conveyed. A few researchers have obtained responses from parents and teens in the same family regarding various parental actions regarding the teens' driving. Although there is general aggregate agreement between parents and teens regarding whether certain things
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were said or done, analysis of intra-familial agreement between parent and teen responses to these items suggest levels of agreement that barely exceed what would occur by chance (Beck, Shattuck, & Raleigh, 2001; Goodwin et al., 2006). An illustration of the complexities of familial communication regarding teen driving can be seen in some of our work with parents and teens. We have recently interviewed parents and teens in the same families, to obtain baseline data for an examination of effects of a recent North Carolina law restricting young drivers' use of mobile communication devices. In what is a fairly typical finding, there is only modest agreement between parents and their teens about parentally imposed restrictions on phone use while driving. In families where the parent and teen agree that they have actually discussed whether teens should use a phone while driving, overall agreement on whether parents have placed restrictions is surprisingly weak. In families where parents report placing restrictions on their teen's phone use, only 76% of teens report there is a restriction. Conversely, when parents report they have not imposed restrictions, 35% of their teens believe there are restrictions. The latter indicates that these differences are not simply self-serving distortions by teens, who might prefer not to “know” about restrictions. Rather this modest degree of agreement simply reflects the vulnerability to misunderstanding that characterizes most human communication. In this case, overall agreement is 74%, which doesn't seem too bad, but simple percent agreement can be a misleading measure of the extent to which two judges or reporters of the same phenomenon assess it similarly. Because percent agreement reflects chance agreement as well as similar judgment, κ is commonly used to measure degree of agreement beyond what would be expected by chance. In this case, the κ value is just .34. κ values of .60 or higher are generally considered to represent “good” agreement (Landis & Koch, 1977). This seeming disconnect between parents and teens in the same families is similar to the notion advanced long ago that husbands and wives see their relationship quite differently, despite being in the same marriage (Bernard, 1972). We should not be surprised that parents and teens also have different understandings. We should, however, be mindful of the difficulties this communication gap presages, as we work to influence parental behaviors with the ultimate goal of affecting teens' driving. In view of the complexity of interpersonal communication, strategies that simply tell parents what they ought to do, by way of informational brochures, slogans, media campaigns or other similarly passive approaches that provide no structural support or environmental “requirement” face daunting odds against their success. 2.4. Whither help? It is not uncommon to find that understanding a phenomenon does not necessarily lead easily to effective interventions to affect it, especially when the target group is a
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large population rather than a small number of individuals (Etzioni, 1972). This may be the case with parenting and teen drivers (Catalano, 2007). Although much is known about parent-teen relations, with the exception of efforts to encourage parents to develop parent-teen driving agreements that proscribe driving in the most dangerous circumstances (Simons-Morton, 2007), little more than issuing general advice or admonitions to parents has been tried. Essentially nothing has, so far, been shown to meaningfully alter how families deal with teens during the supervised driving period in GDL programs. Bleak as that picture appears, it is not necessarily so. Part of the problem may be a failure to take advantage of current scientific understanding of human functioning. Fortunately, there is a substantial body of theoretical-conceptual knowledge, along with extensive research, in several behavioral and social science fields that can provide substantial guidance in developing strategies to improve GDL functioning or otherwise modifying the actions of young teen drivers. Indeed, the one effort that has shown some success in altering parental and teen behavior, was carefully developed drawing on well-established theoretical foundations in the behavioral and social sciences (SimonsMorton, 2007). The attention drawn to the notion of “traffic safety culture” by the recent AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (Kissinger, 2007) initiative stands in stark relief against the rather insular orientation of the traffic safety field. This initiative puts forth several wide-ranging discussions of traffic safety issues — including teen driving — drawing on the conceptual and theoretical resources of disciplines whose well-developed perspectives provide valuable insight into many aspects of human behavior that are both highly relevant and routinely overlooked. Moeckli and Lee (2007) present a discussion of the central role of culture; McKenna (2007) identifies the philosophical underpinnings of a potentially effective program to reduce speeding. I offer some suggestions for how explicit attention to, and use of, well-established theories from a variety of particularly relevant academic disciplines can help us to better understand and, perhaps, affect the behavior of individuals, as well as the groups and institutions that also must play a part in any serious effort to reduce motor vehicle crashes (Foss, 2007). Wish though we might for teen driving issues to be simple, they are not. Although there may be some elegantly simple “solutions,” we cannot realistically hope to stumble upon them without appreciating the complexity of human behavior. The initial benefits of GDL have been achieved based on a few rudimentary principles (reducing risky exposure reduces crashes, lots of practical experience reduces risk given exposure) that have been put in place via the structure of GDL systems. To improve the actual functioning of these systems will necessitate understanding the nature of the phenomena we wish to affect (behavioral compliance, parent-teen communication, complex learning). Ultimately, the goal is to affect teen driving, but the mechanisms by which that is accomplished will involve
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psychological phenomena, interpersonal processes, organizational behavior, cultural and subcultural value systems along with other elements of social structures. Thus, we need to reach well beyond simply understanding teen driver mistakes, knowledge or behavioral dispositions. Keating's (2007) paper in this volume provides a valuable, focused and concise summary of the current state of knowledge regarding adolescent development as it pertains to young, inexperienced drivers. Similar summaries, though they do not presently exist, for numerous other pertinent disciplines would provide equally useful contributions to our understanding of the many, complexly interrelated issues involved in young teen drivers' behaviors and the mechanisms by which they might be altered. We can ignore the accumulated knowledge in other fields of inquiry and hope to be lucky, or we can actively seek to use what is known in these pertinent domains to inform and enhance efforts to address teen driver crash rates. Although the latter would seem to be the rational approach, in a push for quick, easy solutions we seem all too often to opt for the former. 3. Ready, Fire, Aim! — Let's know before we act “It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.” Malcolm Forbes Beyond structurally improving those state GDL systems that currently fail to fully implement the GDL concept, considering our current state of knowledge, it appears that there is little else to be done that can realistically be expected to produce additional safety benefits for young novice drivers (Goodwin, Foss, Mayhew, & Sohn, in press; NHTSA, 2007). Unlike the situation with many other adolescent health domains, the existing research base pertaining to young drivers is distressingly thin, leaving us ill-equipped to take advantage of the current high level of public interest in teen driving. Rather than rushing to enact additional laws or implement additional programs broadly, for which there is little or no empirical evidence, we would do well to devote serious attention to developing a better understanding of the nature of the phenomenon. There are a few areas where immediate and substantial research attention is needed to move us closer to this goal. 3.1. Unknown teen driving exposure Our ability to measure teen driver behavior, and especially teen driving exposure, is presently poor. Consequently our ability to understand the phenomenon, or efforts to affect it, is limited. Lacking good exposure data, we don't know very well how various programs or laws affect either the amount or kind (trip purpose, destination, etc.) of teen driving, nor are we able to make very good sense of crash data to identify risk as distinct from simple exposure. Although it is possible to describe or document some teen driving phenomena, without relevant exposure information it is impossible for us to explain (i.e., to understand). Even a commonly used,
though crude, measure of exposure — the number of licensed drivers — is not available nationally for teen drivers. Although national licensing data are obtained and distributed by FHWA (2006), the failure to adapt this process to take into account the changing nature of licensing among teens in the GDL era has rendered this data base useless for documenting licensing among persons younger than 18 (Ferguson, 2007; IIHS, 2006). Special dedicated studies can help to provide valuable evidence about risk, such as the danger to teens of transporting young passengers (Chen et al., 2000; Preusser, Ferguson, & Williams, 1998). Even the best of those, however, are constrained by weak measures of exposure, relying on relatively crude self-report data or using induced exposure measures that are particularly dubious for the youngest drivers (whose limited ability in avoiding potential danger renders their involvement in “not at fault” crashes disproportionate to their presence in traffic). Self-report measures of behaviors almost always suffer from a lack of any useful “denominator information.” That is, when teens or parents are asked whether they have done something (ignored a restriction, driven too fast, driven after drinking, eaten while driving), we have no idea how many opportunities they have had to do so. Hence, we are hard pressed to know what such reports mean. Moreover, although individuals can, and usually will, answer questions when asked, the veracity of self-report data is far from perfect. Occasionally individuals will distort or deceive, but the much greater problem is simply their inability to provide the kind of information that researchers want and need (Babbie, 2004). Although we can ask, and teens will tell us, how many miles they drove in the past year, we would be more than a little naive to take such reports as anything more than extremely crude guesses (see Goodwin et al., 2006 for an example of where my colleagues and I may have demonstrated just such naiveté!). The current availability of a number of technologies makes it now possible to examine not only the amount, but also the nature, of young drivers' exposure far more precisely than has ever been possible. Ranging from instrumented vehicles for a small number of drivers (Neale, Dingus, Klauer, Sudweeks, & Goodman, 2005), to the ability to track large numbers of individual drivers with GPS and cell phones as they go about their normal activities, to tapping information in on-board computers now available in much of the vehicle fleet, to the possibility of obtaining recorded visual and audio information associated with incidents that reflect potential and actual crashes (McGehee, 2007), we are now on the cusp of having vast amounts of information that will allow us to understand far more than we imagined barely 10 years ago. However, until studies to obtain these kinds of data are funded and completed, we will remain substantially blind to the phenomenon we hope to influence. In addition to providing much-needed information about teen driver exposure, modern technologies also hold the promise of substantially enhancing our understanding of teen crash causation. Crash report data have been enormously
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helpful, but they are inherently limited. Beyond the institutionalized weaknesses of these systems (e.g., failure to include information about non-injured passengers, lack of information about non-injury crashes), some of the potentially most valuable information represent defective measurement. Information about what transpired in a vehicle that perhaps, but not necessarily, led to a crash is obtained by self-report. Beyond the obviously self-serving motivations sometimes invoked (e.g., when reporting belt use, drinking, or foolish though perhaps legal actions), humans are not particularly astute in observing or adept in identifying crash causation. Crashes often result from a confluence of factors, but individuals tend to settle on single-factor explanations. Moreover, the well-known “fundamental attribution error” — the tendency of humans to overemphasize individual traits, rather than environmental conditions or exigencies, as the cause of behaviors — along with other common interpretive biases lead to far less than perfect reports by drivers and investigating officers alike about what may have “caused” a crash (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Ross, 1977). Julian Waller (1985) noted long ago that the nature of crash report forms themselves inadvertently biases what is reported, hence concluded, about crash causation. Video information obtained in the “Naturalistic driving study” (Dingus, 2007; Neale et al., 2005) clearly illustrates instances of driver actions and conditions that sometimes contribute to crashes, but which would not appear in crash reports. 3.2. Understanding parents Although it is clear that teens don't often crash when supervised, we presently have no idea what parents are doing during the first, critical phase of GDL when only supervised driving is allowed. Hence, we have little basis for suggesting what should be done, or why, or how to improve the learning experience. We don't know if parents are transmitting bad driving habits — some observers fear that is the case — or whether they are more conscientious when supervising their teen than when “just driving” themselves. We don't know if they need help, want help, or how effectively to provide the help or support they might want or need. It seems overly ambitious, if not completely delusional, to believe that we could ever expect parents to emulate the behavior of driving instructors. Fortunately, that's probably not necessary for parents to provide valuable “guided experience.” Until we develop a body of literature clearly delineating how parents deal with the learner period of GDL, we will be seriously handicapped in improving the functioning of that part of GDL, or knowing whether improvement is possible, or even needed. We think there is such a need, but at present there is little beyond anecdotal evidence to suggest that is so. With the assistance of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, we have begun one small attempt in North Carolina to begin understanding how parents deal with this part of their teen's licensing. We hope to glean some inkling of what's going on, but many more studies, by other researchers in locations that
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reflect varying driving conditions, populations and licensing rules will be needed. The discussions currently taking place in several states concerning the need to require every teen to take a driver education class and to require driver education classes to follow uniform standards are unlikely to produce the expected benefits. These efforts represent a substantial disconnect between beliefs of the general public and members of the teen driver research community. Although there is substantial promise that we may find ways to improve the training of young drivers, widespread implementation of current promising approaches is premature. A concerted effort is needed to fill in both our basic understanding of teen driving and to address the more applied question of how we might actually reduce those risks through a scientifically grounded approach to training. 4. Summary If there are practically feasible ways to enhance the structure of GDL systems to put in place the basic principles, then those certainly should be done in all states. And if we can find ways to improve the functioning of the elements that are in place, we should do that as well. What we should not do is to continue tinkering with GDL systems, adding bits and pieces that have little or nothing to do with the basic concept. Additional reductions in young driver crash rates clearly are to be desired, but in principle, tinkering further with GDL systems probably holds little promise of achieving those gains until we have a better understanding of teen driving. The clear message from GDL so far is that efforts that manage to reduce exposure, or risky exposure, reliably reduce young driver crashes. That there appears to be relatively little reduction in crash risks once teens move beyond the licensing stages that involve protective restrictions may be because we still know so little about young, beginning drivers. Or it may simply be that the relevant behaviors are so difficult to change that the amount of educating, threatening, coaching, pleading or demanding that can feasibly be implemented for the entire population of new drivers will never be able to bring about measurable changes. At present, evidence for the benefits of anything besides reducing exposure is rather thin. However, this may be more because few serious efforts have been mounted and carefully evaluated. In view of the substantial increase in attention to the continuing high crash rates among novice drivers we are now seeing, we can look forward to having a good deal more solid research and evaluation data to draw on in the coming years. Acknowledgment I greatly appreciate the efforts of Arthur Goodwin, who read and commented on an earlier draft, to impart some sense of coherence and clarity to this paper. It was a daunting task.
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