Distraction is often a factor in teen drivers’ rear-end collisions

In a U.S. study using in-car video recorders, more than three-quarters of rear end collisions involving a teen driver happened when the teen was paying attention to a phone, a passenger or something else other than the road.

When a phone was the distraction, the reaction times of teen drivers were markedly slower, and about half the time they did not brake or steer to avoid the crash, researchers report in the Journal of Safety Research.

Cher Carney, lead author of the study and researcher in the Transportation and Vehicle Safety Policy Research Program at the UI Public Policy Center, spoke with Reuters Health about the study. 

The rest of the article is available here.