Vol:.(1234567890) Journal of Community Health (2021) 46:1236–1243 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-021-01014-y 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER The Impact of an Educational Intervention on Distracted Driving Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors Among College Students Helena Berlin 1  · Courtney Coughenour 1  · Jennifer Pharr 1  · Timothy J. Bungum 1  · Heidi Manlove 2  · Guogan Shan 1 Accepted: 26 June 2021 / Published online: 2 July 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract Distracted driving indiscriminately kills nearly 3500 people each year with young adults having greater risks associated with this phenomenon. Prevention programs targeting the distracted driving habits of young adults are necessary to ameliorate the high costs, both in dollars and in lives, associated with this behavior. Few health education and prevention programs have been assessed for their efectiveness in changing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to distracted driving. This study explores a distracted driving intervention among undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory public health course. A quasi-experimental study design was used to compare the pre- and post-data of the group receiving 5-weeks of a distracted driving intervention to a control group. Questionnaires were administered to both groups prior to and 2 weeks following the intervention to assess changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to distracted driving. A Diference-in-Diference technique showed signifcant changes in knowledge (β = 0.40, p = 0.03) and total scores (β = 2.48, p = 0.04) in the interven- tion (n = 97) compared to the control (n = 131). T-tests examining pre- and post-scores for individual behaviors showed the intervention group displayed positive changes for some behaviors (talking, texting, cellphone use, grooming) compared to the control. The results support the impact that a classroom-based distracted driving intervention can have on undergradu- ate college students. Implications for this type of health education program may lead to improvements in distracted driving attitudes and behavior among this age-group. Keywords Distracted driving · Intervention · Health education · Undergraduate students · Prevention Introduction The leading cause of death among young adults in the United States is unintentional injury, and motor vehicle crashes are a prevalent cause of these types of injuries [1, 2]. With increasing engagement in the use of electronic devices while driving, distracted driving has become a top source of motor vehicle crashes, killing nine Americans daily [3, 4]. According to the National Highway Trafc Safety Adminis- tration (NHTSA), 3142 people were killed and an additional 424,000 are estimated to have been injured because of dis- tracted driving in 2019 [5]. However, since over 660,000 people use their cell phones daily while driving and because of the difculty of proving distracted driving as the cause of a crash, these numbers are likely to be grossly under- reported [6–8]. Distracted driving related motor vehicle crashes also contribute to a large economic burden in the forms of increased insurance rates, healthcare costs, and productivity losses [9]. * Timothy J. Bungum tim.bungum@unlv.edu Helena Berlin hberlin@unlv.nevada.edu Courtney Coughenour Courtney.Coughenhour@unlv.edy Jennifer Pharr Jennifer.Pharr@unlv.edu Heidi Manlove heidi.manlove@odot.state.or.us Guogan Shan Guogan.Shan@unlv.edu 1 School of Public Health, University of Nevada – Las Vegas, 4700 S. Maryland Parkway, Suite 335, Box 3063, Las Vegas, NV 89119, USA 2 Oregon Department of Transportation, Salem, OR 97302, USA