Behind the Wheel (BTW) Smartphone Application

Summary

The purpose of this study is to find out if a phone app can help the learning-to-drive process among teenagers and novice drivers.

Conditions

• High-risk Driving Events

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

BTW app with reward-based feedback

Teen drivers will be notified of their weekly driving performance via a driving safety score with information on the types of high-risk driving behaviors committed as well as progress on maintaining and/or improving weekly safe driving behaviors. Educational materials on different driving situations and scenarios associated with the high-risk driving behaviors (e.g. 90-second videos) will be provided for the driver to review at any point and time. Information on these driving behaviors and the education material will be provided via push notifications from the BTW app. Weekly leader boards will show the driver's driving safety score in comparison to other drivers of the same age. Consistently high driver safety scores in certain driving skill areas (e.g., cornering) and a total overall score above 70% of other users on that skill or total score will unlock gamification-based rewards (e.g., driving safety badges, driving safety score leader board, group challenges with winners).

BEHAVIORAL

BTW app with situational supervised driving practice

Teen drivers will be provided bi-weekly push-notifications from the BTW app notifying them of situational supervised driving practice activities that are to be completed during the assigned week. There are 12 situational supervised driving activities and six skill-building driving activities (Table 1). Skill-building sessions are assigned for off weeks during the first half of the six months (weeks 2-12), allowing for skills to be further developed when the situations are encountered for a second time (weeks 15-23). Parents will be prompted to directly log situational supervised and skill-building driving activities in the app after the session within the BTW app to obtain the module completion date and duration time.

BEHAVIORAL

Sham BTW app

Teens will be provided links to passive education materials and information on car maintenance every week. They will not be given feedback on their driving performances.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  collaborator FED

• Motao Zhu

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Motao Zhu, MD, MS, PhD · Nationwide Children's Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

15 Years

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2023-02-19

Primary Completion

2025-10-31

Completion

2025-10-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations