Who Can Best Influence the Quality of Teenagers’ Cars?

Abstract

Objective: Because young drivers’ vehicles have been found to offer poor occupant protection in many countries, this study sought to identify the most appropriate audience for information and publicity designed to change purchasing preferences to improve these vehicles and resultant injury outcomes.

Methods: An analysis of New Zealand vehicles crashed by drivers aged 19 years or less linked to data on the owner of the vehicle was undertaken. Details on the crashed vehicles were merged with licensing information to identify the owner's age group.

Results: It was presumed that most vehicles driven by teens but owned by someone aged 30 to 59 would be owned by a parent of the teen. Only 14 percent of vehicles crashed by teens were owned by teens. Generally, older vehicles with poor crashworthiness were provided for the teenage driver, whatever the age group of the owner. However, cars crashed by teens but owned by their parents were on average almost 2 years younger and had relatively superior crashworthiness than the teenager-owned and crashed vehicles, although their crashworthiness was still poor compared to vehicles driven by older drivers.

Conclusions: Evidently, parents are key people in making vehicle purchasing decisions regarding the cars that teenagers drive and should be the main audience for measures to improve the poor secondary safety performance of teenagers’ vehicles.

Keywords:

• young drivers
• vehicle safety
• vehicle choice
• crashworthiness
• risk