It has long been debated on how many hours a teenager should have practice behind the wheel before being able to test for their driver’s license. Now, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute provides evidence supporting the argument that more practice is indeed better and beneficial. They argue that “practice may not make perfect, but it does make teen driving safer.” The institute conducted a study and published the results in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In the study they provided the statistical evidence they found that shows the benefit of more practice hours for teenage drivers.
The study showed more practice reduces crash and near-crash events.
The study was conducted by using four in-car cameras in order to monitor teen drivers during their permit and independent phases of driving. They studied the behaviors of 82 teen drivers, each of whom were monitored for 22 months. The study was conducted several years ago, between 2011 and 2014, but it took several years to complete the analysis and get the study into publication. Each driver’s vehicle had four different cameras that were out of sight and out of the way of their driving. They were monitored for their learner’s permit phase and the first year of their independent driving after being licensed.
The study was in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and TransAnalytics Inc.
In the study, they specifically saw that teen drivers who had less supervision during their beginning years of driving had an average of 17 crash or near-crash events per 1,000 hours of driving. Alternatively, teen drivers who had more supervision only had an average of 12 crash or near-crash events in the same time frame. That means they had five less crash or near-crash events, which may seem small, but is actually an incredible number.
They found more interesting statistics beyond the benefits of increased practice.
In addition, to comparing the amount of practice, the institute also analyzed other pieces of the data. For example, they found that between girls and boys with less varied driving practice, girls had a higher rate of safety-critical events. They also found that teens driving a shared family car were involved in less risky situations, having better driving behavior that teens driving a car that was their own.
Furthermore, evidence supported the benefits not only of more driving hours, but also diversity in the driving conditions. For example, driving often in both daytime and nighttime as well as on different road types reduced crash events in teen drivers. Interestingly, the study found that many teen drivers did not actually satisfy the required 45 hours of driving time that is required for the permit phase in Virginia.
With this study being published, policymakers and drivers education programs are in talks to determine if stricter requirements should be set.
