Driving beliefs and behaviors of novice teen drivers and their parents: implications for teen driver crash risk.

This project was a cross sectional survey of 739 matched family pairs of recently licensed teens and their parents. It was designed to assess the relationship of driving behaviors between parents and teens and to investigate predictors of teen crashes. One third of teens reported being involved in a crash during an average of 14 months of driving while 19.9% reported received a moving violation. Teens reported engaging in most risky driving behaviors more frequently than their parents. Teen and parental driving behaviors were associated, but the level of association was low, suggesting that other factors may outweigh parental influence. In multivariate analysis, only the teen's belief about their crash risk and whether the teen had received a moving violation were associated with reporting a crash.