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Traffic Injury Research

Motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death and acquired disability for children after age one. The bulk of the Center’s research is devoted to preventing the events leading to these tragedies by helping to develop improved safety designs and technologies, increased awareness and compliance with proper restraint practices, and an evidence-based approach to teaching teens to become safe, responsible drivers.

The fundamental idea behind our work is that children (mechanically, psychologically, and socially) are not small adults. Therefore, their response to trauma deserves to be examined and understood as a distinct branch of science.

Vehicles are designed for an average size adult male. Children’s size and relative proportions vary greatly throughout the pediatric age range and are very different from the average size of an average size adult male. The Center for Injury Research and Prevention conducts and publishes research that is instrumental in closing this gap by informing improvements to federal regulation and testing criteria, legislative policy, and vehicle and restraint design.

The Center’s projects range from designing a new anthropomorphic 10-year-old dummy for vehicle crash tests to developing communications campaigns aimed at changing societal norms regarding child restraint practices and teenage driving.

Published findings from the Partners for Child Passenger Safety study have been crucial in making the case for strengthened child restraint laws at the federal level and in 42 states. The Center’s researchers were the first to quantify the margin of protection offered when using age- and size- appropriate child restraints versus no restraint or using an adult seat belt alone. Between 1999 and 2007, age-appropriate restraint use among children under age 9 in the PCPS study population increased from 51 percent to 78 percent, and booster seat use increased from 4 percent to approximately 36 percent. These findings are broadly cited in state and federal legislative hearings.

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Traffic Injury Research Programs and Networks:

Child Occupant Protection Research Projects

• Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS)

  In a unique collaboration between academic institutions and private industry, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania, and State Farm Insurance Companies joined forced in 1997 to form Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS). PCPS soon became the world’s largest child-focused motor vehicle crash surveillance system, and its findings are recognized worldwide. PCPS applies the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP’s interdisciplinary approach to studying injury from many perspectives to determine the most effective ways to improve child safety in crashes. This research initiative’s data collection, which ended in December 2007, has published more than 60 papers in scientific journals. Through scientific publication, its ongoing analyses will continue to be shared with industry, regulators, policymakers, public health educators, and the media through scientific publication.

• Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN)

  The Center for Injury Research and Prevention at Children’s Hospital serves as the only site primarily focused on pediatric occupants in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s CIREN network. CIREN is a federally supported multidisciplinary research affiliation of clinicians and engineers in academia, industry and government, with the mission of improving the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of motor vehicle crash-related injuries. Pooling data from eight network trauma centers nationwide, CIREN provides a rich database for analysis, providing the foundation needed to effect changes that will reduce deaths, disabilities, and human economic costs through the study of real-world cases of serious injuries sustained in car crashes.

• Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS)

  CChIPS is an Industry/University Co-Operative Research Center established through a grant from the National Science Foundation. Through CChIPS, researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and The University of Pennsylvania work side-by-side with industry to conduct translational research that is practical to industry. CChIPS focuses exclusively on advancing the safety of children by facilitating scientific inquiry into child and adolescent injury and translating these findings into commercial applications (such as vehicle or restraint designs) and public education programs.

• NHTSA Indefinite Quantities Contract: Building on the Findings of Partners for Child Passenger Safety

  The Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS) database is the largest available source of information on children in motor vehicle crashes. As a result, the PCPS database is an ideal source data for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to use in determining regulation and policy. NHTSA currently provides funding for the Center to conduct research several “Task Orders” across a wide range of research topics including: Abdominal injury to seat belt-restrained children; improving anthropomorphic test dummies (ATD) to more accurately represent the biokinetics of a human child; examining the risk of injury to center-rear seated children using lap-only or lap-shoulder belts; restraint use patterns based on vehicle model and year; effectiveness of built-in child restraint systems; and developing interventions to improve booster seat use in at-

Teen Driver Safety Research Projects

• Young Driver Research Initiative (YDRI)

  In 2005, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Companies ® formed an alliance to reduce injury and death from young driver-related crashes through scientific research and outreach. Motor vehicle crashes remain the No. 1 cause of death among teens in the U.S. Teen drivers (ages 16 to 19) die at four times the rate of adult drivers (ages 25 to 69).
  
  In early 2006, the alliance conducted the first National Young Driver Survey to learn how teens perceive and experience driving. The survey’s weighted data represent 10.2 million ninth through 11th graders in U.S. public schools. The initial results were published in a report called Driving: Through the Eyes of Teens.  The alliance also formed a multidisciplinary YDRI Expert Panel. Its findings were published in a special 11-article supplement called The Science of Safe Driving Among Adolescents in the June 2006 issue of the scientific journal Injury Prevention.
  
  YDRI conducts quantitative and qualitative research that incorporates scientifically rigorous survey, ethnographic observation, and interviews to gain knowledge about teen driving from teens and parents. The panel regularly shares its study findings with the traffic safety and practitioner community to advance the science and to help pass stricter Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) laws, a key part of proven teen-driver crash prevention.

• Research with Teens in the National Advance Driving Simulator (NADS)

  Research with young drivers involving the National Advance Driving Simulator (NADS) Project, the largest and most advanced ground vehicle simulator in the world, is underway through collaboration between The Center for Injury Research and Prevention and The Center for Virtual Proving Ground Simulation at the University of Iowa. Through the CChIPS grant, The Center for Injury Research and Prevention has undertaken the task of evaluating the driving simulator’s effectiveness at replicating the real-world driving experience for young drivers. If NADS is determined to be a valid method, Center researchers will be able to use the simulator to compare differences in driving performance and risk-taking behaviors among newly licensed teens and thereby inform scientifically-based interventions to reduce young drivers’ crash risk.

• National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth (NARSY)

  The NARSY is a landmark survey conducted annually since 2002 by the Adolescent Risk Communications Institute of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at The University of Pennsylvania. Through over 900 telephone interviews with 14-22 year olds annually, the survey addresses this demographic’s media use, school activities and environment, and engagement in risk-taking behaviors such as gambling, smoking, drug and alcohol use, and risky sexual behaviors. In collaboration with our colleagues at the Annenberg School, The Center for Injury Research and Prevention collects data on teen driving experiences to contribute to the NARSY. Data from the survey will ultimately be used to provide the researchers with a clear picture of the attitudinal and behavioral risk factors that affect young drivers as well as a means of comparing attitudes of pre-driving. teens with those of older teens and young adults with regard to behaviors such as seat belt use.

• Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS)

  A unique research partnership between our Center, the University of Pennsylvania and State Farm®, PCPS provided a rich bank of data on demographic and environmental factors in crashes involving children younger than 16, in which teens were driving. PCPS found that children driven by teens have a much higher risk of serious injury in a crash, are much more likely to ride unrestrained or inappropriately restrained, and are more likely to ride in the front seat.