Drive safer with passengers, except for young drivers

William Atkins
Wednesday, 16 July 2008 20:16

Science - Health

Canadian engineer Chris Lee and American engineer Mohamed Abdel-Aty discovered that the more passengers in a car actually makes the driver safer, except when young adults are behind the wheel with passengers younger than them.


The conclusion of their research is found in the article “Presence of passengers: Does it increase or reduce driver's crash potential?”, which was published online on July 1, 2008, in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.

The authors of the article are Chris Lee, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, and Mohamed Abdel-Aty, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, U.S.A.

The purpose of their study, according to their paper’s abstract, was to examine “… the impact of passengers on the driver's crash potential on freeways.”

Lee and Abdel-Aty used motor vehicle crash records from a four-year period (1999 to 2003) on a 36.3-mile (50-kilometer) section of Interstate 4 freeway in Orlando, Florida, United States.

Interstate 4 is located totally within the state of Florida. It provides a southwest to northeast connection in central Florida—between Tampa-St. Petersburg, Lakeland-Winter Haven, Orlando, and Daytona Beach.

What did these two engineering researchers find in their study? Are you safer driving alone or with passengers? Please read on.