Virtual driving assessment predicts risk of crashing for newly licensed teen drivers
New research published today by the journal Pediatrics found that driving skills measured at the time of licensure on a virtual driving assessment (VDA), which exposes drivers to common serious crash scenarios, helps predict crash risk in newly licensed young drivers.
This study, conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, brings the research community one step closer to identifying which skill deficits put young new drivers at higher risk for crashes. With this cutting-edge information, more personalized interventions can be developed to improve the driving skills that prevent crashes.
While drivers between the ages of 15 and 20 only make up about 5% of all drivers on the road, they are involved in approximately 12% of all vehicle crashes and 8.5% of fatal crashes. The time of greatest crash risk is in the months right after these young drivers receive their license, largely due to deficits in driving skills.
However, many of these newly licensed drivers do avoid crashes. The challenge for policymakers, clinicians, and families has been identifying which drivers are at increased risk of crashing during the learning phase before they drive on their own. Early identification of at-risk drivers offers the opportunity to intervene with training and other resources known to help prevent crashes, making the roads safer for everyone.
Over the past two decades, CIRP researchers have systematically determined the primary reason for novice driver crashes — inadequate driving skills, such as speed management — and conducted studies that informed the development and validation of a self-guided VDA that measures performance of these driving skills in common serious crash scenarios that cannot be evaluated with on-road testing. The VDA utilizes the Ready-Assess™ platform developed by Diagnostic Driving, Inc., an AI-driven virtual driving assessment that provides the driver with the insights and tools to improve.
In this study, researchers examined the ability of the VDA, delivered at the time of the licensing road test, to predict crash risk in the first year after obtaining licensure in the state of Ohio. Using a unique study design, the results of the VDA were linked to police-reported crash records for the first year after obtaining a license.
“Our previous research showed that performance on the VDA predicted actual on-road driving performance, as measured by failure on the licensing road test. This new study went further to determine whether VDA performance could identify unsafe driving performance predictive of future crash risk,” said lead study author Elizabeth Walshe, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist and clinical researcher who directs the Neuroscience of Driving team at CIRP. “We found that drivers categorized by their performance as having major issues with dangerous behavior were at higher risk of crashing than average new drivers.”
The researchers analyzed a unique integrated dataset of individual results of VDA performance, collected in the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles before the licensing road test, linked to licensing and police-reported crash records in 16,914 first-time newly licensed drivers under the age of 25. Data were collected from applicants who completed the VDA between July 2017 and December 2019 on the day they passed the on-road licensing examination in Ohio. Researchers examined crash records up to mid-March 2020. More