The Role of Parent Feedback and Vehicle Status on Supervised Driving in the Minnesota Teen Driver Study

This paper provides a brief quantitative and qualitative examination of supervised driving among teens in three study groups of the Minnesota Teen Driver Study. A Control group (N=92) served as the baseline comparison group against which the effects of two treatments were examined. The first treatment group received in-vehicle coaching about risky driving via a Teen Driver Support System (Partial TDSS), whereas the second treatment group received the invehicle coaching from the same system, which also reported monitored risky behaviors back to parents (Full TDSS). Overall, there were significant differences in the average number of miles driven by teens in the study groups. Average mileage driven also differed depending on vehicle status (shared vs. unshared). Teens in the Control and Partial TDSS groups who did not share a vehicle drove significantly more miles than teens in the Full TDSS group. Supervised driving patterns across the study groups as well as for shared versus unshared vehicles were also different. In general, the presence of parent feedback appeared to mediate how frequently teens were supervised throughout the study, regardless of vehicle status. However, parents, in general, allowed their teens to drive more frequently in risky conditions at the end of the study compared to the beginning