The difficulty in demonstrating effectiveness of driver education has often been cited as a reason for dropping this curriculum from public schools. At the same time, alternate means of delivering driver education have proliferated, through home schooling, driving schools and auto clubs, as well as computer and web-based instruction. Currently, there is no comprehensive set of guidelines for evaluating driver education programs.
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To help fill this gap, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and BMW of North America, Inc. are co-sponsoring a project to develop evaluation guidelines. Just initiated by Northport Associates, an internationally recognized traffic safety research firm in Ontario, Canada, the project will be conducted over 12 months.
“Traffic crashes are the number one killer of teens, and so it is essential that we place greater emphasis on enhancing the training novice drivers receive,” said Peter Kissinger, President and CEO, AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. “Our guidelines will provide scientific methods with which driver education programs can be evaluated and refined for maximum impact. The project report and guidelines should have widespread application throughout North America.”
This project will develop guidelines for how to evaluate initial driver education programs for teens. Providing detail on which variables need to be considered and the best analytic approaches, the guidelines will also cover time frames and sample sizes necessary for rigorous evaluation of driver education programs. These comprehensive guidelines will be developed by assimilating past evaluations and consulting extensively with experts, and will provide a road map of options for how to go about evaluating a driver education program.
“Although automobiles are getting ever safer, the greatest cause of collisions remains driver error, and one important way to reduce the number of road traffic crashes is driver education,” said Michael McHale, Group Communications Manager, BMW of North America, LLC. “Safety is a top priority at BMW and we are very excited to be working with the AAA Foundation on a project that stands to impact the safety of future generations of drivers.”
Tagged with: drivers' education • teen driving
Filed under: Good Driving