Impact of passengers on young driver safety

An analysis of young driver accidents uses the quasi-induced exposure technique to disaggregate accidents by different characteristics or circumstances while making estimates of the relative travel exposure for those different circumstances. Relationships are developed to investigate the effect of passengers on young driver (age 16 to 20) accident propensity. Three passenger groupings are used: solo (no passengers), peer, and adult or child. The database contains 77,312 accidents involving young drivers in Kentucky in 1994, 1995, and 1996. The passenger-group variable was found to have a significant effect on young driver accident propensities. Young drivers have the lowest propensity to cause single- or two-vehicle accidents when traveling with either adults and/or children. They have an increased propensity for causing single-vehicle accidents when traveling with peers. The relative accident involvement ratios for both single- and two-vehicle accidents for young drivers traveling alone were close to 1.0, suggesting that they were at fault approximately the same percentage of the time that they were not at fault. Seven variables were considered for possible interaction with passenger group: driver gender, total occupant gender, time of week, time of day, highway type, vehicle age, and safety-restraint usage.