Transportation professor Chandra Bhat, and two of his civil engineering graduate students, completed a study on aggressive driving behavior and how it — along with other driving factors — relates to the severity of injuries sustained during a traffic accident. The subject is both professional and personal for Bhat: his daughter, Prerna, just received her driver’s license.
Chandra Bhat, one of The University of Texas at Austin’s traffic authorities, has a new study on aggressive driving.
One finding: 16- and 17-year-old drivers behind the wheel of a pickup truck are 100 percent more likely to be severely injured during a crash than a teen of the same age driving a car.The study is the first of its kind to examine how aggressive driving behavior—as well as other driving characteristics like time of day and number of passengers in a vehicle—relates to the severity of injuries sustained during a traffic accident.
Unlike previous studies in this field, this one gave considerable attention to small age variations in teenagers and found that the younger a driver is, the more likely he/she will drive aggressively and be involved in a serious crash.
Read Melissa Mixon’s story about the study and check out Bhat’s tips for the parents of teenage drivers at the Cockrell School of Engineering Web site.
http://www.engr.utexas.edu/features/6696-aggressivedriving
From:
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/research/2010/10/07/teens-and-pickup-trucks-not-such-a-good-mix/
