130 - A Virtual Driving Assessment Delivered in Pediatric Primary Care Demonstrates Improved Skills with More Practice Hours During the Learner Period.

Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death in adolescents and young drivers are overrepresented in crash statistics. Crashes are largely due to driver errors, and crash risk is highest in the first months of independent driving after gaining licensure. In the majority of states, including Pennsylvania, young driver licensing policies primarily require parent-supervised practice as the means of driver education, with very few states requiring professional training. Despite this, it remains unknown how much supervised driving practice is needed for gaining higher-order safe driving skills for avoiding crashes.

Objective: This cross-sectional study examined the relationship between the number of parent-supervised practice driving hours and adolescent learner driver skills, measured via a new and validated Virtual Driving Assessment that assesses safety-critical driving skills and crash-risk via common crash scenarios.

Design/Methods: Building on two decades of research, the scalable VDA has been deployed as part of Primary Care Clinical Services at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This cross-sectional study utilizes data from N=1,953 adolescent patients who completed the VDA and a brief survey when visiting Primary Care, between April 2021 through November 2022. The survey captured the number of hours a teen driver had spent practice driving with a parent at the time of taking the VDA (none; < 15 hours; 15- < 65 hours; 65 or more hours).

Results: The data suggests that increased supervised practice driving hours is associated with improved performance on the VDA. Specifically, 89% of drivers reporting no supervised practice demonstrated major issues on the VDA, but this proportion decreased to 80% at < 15 hours, then 67% at 15- < 65 hours and was lowest at 62% among drivers with 65 or more hours. Correspondingly, the proportion of drivers with no issues on the VDA was lowest at no supervised practice (1%) and increased with more hours of practice: 3% at < 15 hours, and then increased to 14% at both 15- < 65 hours and 65 or more hours.

Conclusion(s): The translation of research into this VDA now delivered via the Primary care clinic, has allowed us to assess young driver skills during the learner period and shows the first evidence that a higher amount of supervised practice hours is associated with improved safety-critical driving skills. A longitudinal study of learner drivers across the learner period would further support these results.