Safer Cruising: Program Monitors Teen Drivers for Free

Feb. 28, 2007 — -- Teens are among the riskiest drivers on the road. Within the first six months of getting a license, teens are 16 times more likely to have a crash than 35- to 40-year-old adults.

"Teenagers are at one of the safest points in their life in a vehicle when they're with their parent learning. They have such a low crash rate," said Rusty Weiss of DriveCam. "Then, when mom and dad step out of the car, that crash rate goes the highest it ever will be. And the difference is mom and dad are out of the car."

American Family Mutual Insurance Co. now offers technology made by DriveCam to help teach teens how to change their driving behaviors. It's a video camera mounted in vehicles that records any abrupt maneuvers.

American Family will begin offering the cameras free of charge for up to year to customers with teen drivers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Indiana.

Program participants will get DriveCams mounted on their rear view mirrors. The device has one lens that faces the driver and one that faces the road to capture both internal and external sights and sounds.

The camera is on at all times when the vehicle is being driven but only records when something unusual happens, such as swerving, hard braking or speeding.

Rick Fetherston of American Family Insurance said, "This is a radical approach because it takes 21st-century technology and uses the video, which can be a teaching moment between the parent and the child to talk about a very specific incident of risky driving behavior."

David Hackworthy, a student participating in a study using the DriveCam technology said, "It's made me become aware of my surroundings and what's going on not inside my car but around it and ahead."

DriveCam is currently used in 60,000 fleet vehicles, such as buses and taxis, but this is the first time it's being offered to individuals.

Pilot programs conducted by American Family at Edgewood High School in Madison, Wis., and Prior Lake High School in Prior Lake, Minn., showed that the system lowered risky behavior in teenage drivers by 70 percent to 90 percent over the course of 18 weeks.