Parents can cut risks to teen drivers

Teen drivers with their own set of wheels may be more likely to get into crashes than their peers who share a car with their parents, a new U.S. study suggests.

Traffic collisions are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, killing more than 5,000 each year.

"With teen drivers, you have to recognize that it's a public health issue," said Dr. Jeffrey Weiss, a Phoenix, Ariz.,pediatrician who co-wrote a report on teenage drivers for the October issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The first study looked at 2,167 students, 70 per cent of whom said they drove their own cars or had easy access to one and didn't have to ask permission before going for a spin.

Among this group, 25 per cent crashed, compared with 10 per cent of teens who shared access to cars.

The lower crash likely doesn't reflect less driving time, said the study's lead author, Dr. Flaura Koplin Winston. Rather, it could be because these teens have to ask their parents for the keys a way for parents to keep tabs on their kids' driving and make teens feel more accountable.

Teens with easy access to a car were also about 25 per cent more likely to use a cellphone while driving and to speed, compared with teens who had to ask permission to take the car.

The second study by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was based on a nationally representative sample of more than 5,500 teens in grades nine through 11 who answered questionnaires in 2006.

The teens reported four types of parenting styles:

• Authoritative (high support along with rules and monitoring).
• Authoritarian (low support with rules and monitoring).
• Permissive (high support with low rules and monitoring).
• Uninvolved (low support and low rules).

Teens who had authoritative parents were half as likely to get into a collision comparedwith teens with uninvolved parents. Those with authoritative or authoritarian parents wore seatbelts twice as often and were half as likely to speed as teens with uninvolved parents, the researchers found.

The findings highlight the value of authoritative parenting and graduated-licensing laws for teens, said Dr. Niranjan Karnik, a University of Chicago specialist in adolescent mental health.

In September, a study by the Ottawa-based Traffic Injury Research Foundation also found that parental supervision, curfews, and a prohibition on peer passengers at least in the learning years were the most effective elements of graduated licensing systems in several provinces and states.

The latest research was funded by State Farm Insurance Co.