The parental factor in adolescent reckless driving: The road ahead

The special issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention deals with the role of the parental factor in adolescent reckless driving. Additional validating evidence of the parental influence is provided by the studies of Brookland and other researchers. These researchers have found that adolescents' crash involvement is related to parents' crash involvement. Some other researchers have established a correlation between the kinematic driving of parent-teen pairs, which is most pronounced in the beginning of teens' driving experience. These researchers show that the risky driving behavior of young male drivers is associated with the perceived riskiness of their fathers' driving, and the same tended to be true for female drivers and their mothers. Many of these researchers also report that parental modeling of aggressive driving, substance use driving, distracted driving, and moving violations are predictive of youth risk in all domains of risky driving.