Hazard Anticipation Program for Parents of Teen Drivers

The project seeks to test an intervention designed to improve parents' communication about roadway hazards by comparing parent instruction and teen driving outcomes between dyads whose parents were assigned to the intervention vs. the control condition. Participants will be 100 parent-teen dyads. Half of the parent-teen dyads will receive the intervention and half will not. Parents who receive the intervention will complete web-based program developed to help parents instruct teens on how to identify hazards on the roadway and respond appropriately before they pose a crash risk. Parents in the intervention arm of the study will be given 2 weeks to complete the training. Parents in the control arm of the study will not receive training. After the delivery period, parents and teens will be given two additional weeks to apply the training in their everyday driving instruction. During this period, parents in both groups will complete a minimum of 5 drives with their teen that will be recorded. Investigators will then have teens and parents complete a drive in a driving simulator. Teens will drive and parents will instruct from the passenger seat, just like they would in the real world. The drive will have 12 hazards. Compared to parents in the control group, investigators believe that parents in the intervention group will exhibit improved communication about potential hazard detection with their teens. Similarly, the investigators believe that teens of parents who received the training will be better at anticipating and reacting to potential hazards on the roadway when driving independently compared to teens whose parents did not engage in the program.