At the doctor’s office, Philly-area teens are tested for problem driving behaviors like tailgating

Glancing at his rearview mirror Wednesday morning, Frank Quinn saw other drivers pull over behind him and wondered why. Then he heard a siren, and he quickly hit the brakes.

But by the time an ambulance whizzed by on his left, Quinn, 16, a junior at Roman Catholic High School, was unable to come to a full stop.

“It kind of came up out of nowhere,” he said afterward.

Quinn was not driving a real car but a computerized driving simulator, set up in a location where people don’t normally think about driver safety: the doctor’s office.

The simulators, designed to identify risky driving behaviors in a safe, virtual setting, have now been used by more than 4,000 Philly-area teenagers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia outpatient clinics, officials said at a news conference.

There is no charge to patients for the assessments, in which the driver uses a steering wheel and pedals to navigate suburban and city streets on a computer screen. The tests are funded with a $4 million grant from a New Jersey-based company that has a keen interest in reducing car accidents: NJM Insurance Group.

Mitch Livingston, the company president and chief executive officer, said CHOP researchers approached the firm with a request for funding, and company officials quickly agreed.

“The need is clear,” he said at the news conference. “Auto accidents are one of the leading causes of death among teens.”

Compared with older motorists, teen drivers are involved in nearly three times as many fatal crashes per mile driven, according to the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. When including all crashes, the rate for teen drivers is nearly four times as high as that of drivers aged 20 and up.

CHOP offers the optional driving assessment to teenagers ages 15 and up at 26 of its primary care clinics. The clinics notify parents about the program beforehand by email and text message, and nurses and doctors mention it again during the visit, said Flaura Koplin Winston, co-scientific director of CHOP’s Center for Injury Research Prevention.

Winston has been studying ways to improve teen driver safety for decades, and she worked with colleagues to develop an early version of the simulator a decade ago. Teenagers using that simulator were more likely than adults to make mistakes that can lead to accidents, such as speeding, failing to look left and right at intersections, and following other cars too closely, Winston’s team found.

Research is still underway on the impact of the commercial version of the simulator that’s installed at the CHOP outpatient clinics, developed by a CHOP spinout called Diagnostic Driving Inc. But early results are encouraging, Winston said.

The devices simulate sudden distractions that can cause problems even for a driver who is following all the rules — such as pedestrians darting across a crosswalk at the last minute, or a beach ball rolling into the road from a playground.

Teenagers take the assessments after a primary-care visit, typically in a lobby or other office space, not in an exam room. The system then emails a detailed report to them and their parents or guardians.

Quinn and other Roman Catholic students were invited to try the simulators Wednesday before the news conference.

The teenager has his learner’s permit and has started to drive a real car, with his parents in the passenger’s seat. He said the simulator wasn’t quite like the real thing, but he said he enjoyed the challenge.

“It’s a little touchy,” he said.

The simulator also has been tested at Bureau of Motor Vehicles locations in Ohio.

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to indicate that the simulator software already is commercially available from CHOP spinout Diagnostic Driving Inc.