On-Road Effectiveness of a Tablet-Based Teen Driver Training Intervention

The largest cause of novice driver crashes is their inexperience, causing both failures to anticipate hazards and to maintain attention to the forward roadway. A number of computer-based training programs have been shown to improve novice drivers’ hazard anticipation and attention maintenance skills. The Engaged Driver Training System (EDTS) is a computer tablet-based program targeted at teaching novice drivers both, to anticipate latent hazards and decrease distracting activities in the presence of such hazards. Previous simulator testing of EDTS has found it to be effective at improving latent hazard anticipation and decreasing distraction. This current study extends that research by conducting an on-road evaluation of EDTS, and by examining the impact of training parents along with their teens. This evaluation found that EDTS-trained teens showed better hazard anticipation on-road than the placebo-trained teens. Teens who participated with their parents in training identified a higher proportion of latent hazards than teens who did not participate with their parents, but the difference was not statistically significant.