The Study Of Factors That Influence Drunk-driving Behavior Of Teenagers

With the development of social economy, more and more teenagers drive alone. And because of drunk-driving, traffic accidents occurred frequently. As these accidents always cause serious and irreversible damage, more and more experts and scholars devote themselves to studying teenagers’ driving and drunk-driving behavior, in order to explore effective methods to avoid or reduce traffic accidents as well as improve traffic safety.Through the methods of questionnaire survey, focus group and laboratory simulative experiments, this study explore the factors influencing teenagers’ drunkdriving behavior, and provide experimental basis for intervening teenagers’ drunkdriving behavior.This study consisted of two parts and three experiments. In part one(experiment one), we investigated 93 teenage drivers’(male 48,female 45))drinking, driving and other social behaviors in daily life. All the participants aged in 18 to 21. We explored the factors influencing teenage drivers’ attitude to drunk-driving based on their own personality traits driving attitude and driving habits, etc. Part two consisted of two laboratory simulative driving experiments and discussed the effect of alcohol on teenagers’ driving behaviors, and put forwarded effective intervention methods. Experiment two compared driving performance of three groups under different blood alcohol concentration. Experiment three compared teenagers’ drunk-driving performance under high/low impulsiveness cognitive style.The results showed as follows:1)Teenagers’ consciousness of drunk-driving was weak, and some of them were not aware of the serious damage of drunk-driving, so they accepted drunk-driving behavior by themselves or other people. With the improvement of social and familial economic level, more and more teenagers contact with cars and alcohol early, which had a close relationship to frequent drunk-driving events of teenagers. And relevant data also reflected the high correlation trend.2) Compared to waking state, teenagers’ driving performance significantly reduced after drinking, especially in the aspects of elapsed time, longitudinal acceleration, longitudinal velocity, crashes, throttle input counts and vehicle curvature. And higher the BAC, worse was the driving performance. But there was no significant difference in vehicle yaw rate, vehicle heading angle and steering wheel rate.3) When it came to waking state, high impulsive teenager’ driving performance is slightly worse than low impulsive ones. And after drinking, both groups’ driving performance got significantly worse and high impulsive teenagers even worse than low impulsive ones. Mainly reflected in the elapsed time, longitudinal velocity, and throttle input counts. But there was no significant difference in crashes, steering wheel rate and vehicle curvature.The results of this study will contribute to insightful comprehension of teenage drivers’ situation of drinking and driving,and further understanding of the effect of blood alcohol concentration and the personality trait of our country’s teenagers on drunk-driving behavior. Moreover, it will provide theory basis for practical and effective intervention of teenage drivers’ traffic safety.