Thursday, October 7, 2010
Teens and pickup trucks–not such a good mix
Transportation expert Chandra Bhat and his daughter, Prerna, who just received her driver's license. Bhat and two of his graduate students have a new study on aggressive driving behavior and how it relates to the severity of injuries sustained during an accident.
One finding: 16- and 17-year-old drivers behind the wheel of a pickup truck are 100 percent more likely to be severely injured during a crash than a teen of the same age driving a car.
The study is the first of its kind to examine how aggressive driving behavior—as well as other driving characteristics like time of day and number of passengers in a vehicle—relates to the severity of injuries sustained during a traffic accident.
Unlike previous studies in this field, this one gave considerable attention to small age variations in teenagers and found that the younger a driver is, the more likely he/she will drive aggressively and be involved in a serious crash.
Read Melissa Mixon’s story about the study and check out Bhat’s tips for the parents of teenage drivers at the Cockrell School of Engineering Web site.
