Improving teenage driver perceptions regarding the impact of distracted driving in the Pacific Northwest David S. Hurwitz a , Erika Miller b , Mafruhatul Jannat a , Linda Ng Boyle c , Shane Brown d , Ahmed Abdel-Rahim d , and Haizhong Wang a a School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA; b Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA; c Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA; d Department of Civil Engineering, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA ABSTRACT The goal of this educational outreach project was to examine perceptions of driver distraction among teenagers in the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, to identify secondary tasks this group may consider distracting and determine their self-reported engagement in those same secondary tasks while driving. An interactive presentation was developed and administered to 1,400 teenage drivers. Teenagers from age 14 to 18 years were recruited from high schools in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon with an approximately equal sample in each State. Of these participants, 1,006 teenage drivers responded to a pre- and postknowledge survey administered immediately before and 2 weeks after the interactive presentation. The purpose of the survey was to measure the degree to which the interactive presentation improved teenage driver perspectives regarding the hazards of distracted driving. Results indicated that the interactive presentation positively influenced teenage driver perspectives, meaning that after the interactive presentation, teenage drivers were more likely to correctly identify different types of distracted driving. KEYWORDS distracted driving; teenage drivers; transportation safety; education; outreach 1. Introduction Young drivers are a particularly vulnerable driving group, with the highest crash risk when compared to other age groups (Mayhew, Simpson, & Pak, 2003; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA], 2000). Research sug- gests that this can be attributed to inexperience (Williams, Karpf, & Zador, 1983), higher willingness to take risk (Hedlund, 2007; Laapotti, Keskinen, Hatakka, & Katila, 2001), and higher propensity to engage in distracting activities and height- ened susceptibility to peer influences (Allen and Brown, 2008; Chen, Baker, Braver, & Li, 2000). CONTACT David S. Hurwitz david.hurwitz@oregonstate.edu School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Oregon State University, 101 Kearney Hall, 1501 SW Campus Way, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC and The University of Tennessee JOURNAL OF TRANSPORTATION SAFETY & SECURITY 2016, VOL. 8, NO. 2, 148–163 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19439962.2014.997329 Downloaded by [University of Delaware] at 05:01 31 March 2016