Associations of road and visual environment characteristics with speeding behaviors among high risk teen drivers

Traffic crashes are the leading cause of injury and death among U.S. teenagers. While research has mainly focused on teen driver-related factors, the influence of road design and visual environments on risky driving behaviors like speeding remains understudied. This study examined associations of road and visual environment characteristics with speeding behavior among teen drivers aged 16 and 17 who received a traffic citation.

We collected driving data via GPS-based vehicle telematics devices. We merged the driving data, recorded at 2-minute intervals for two months, for each driver, with Google Street View images. We applied semantic segmentation to characterize the visual environment of roads driven by teens. We used zero-inflated negative binomial regressions to identify the road and visual environment characteristics associated with increased risks of speeding events and rates per 1000 miles driven.

Of 18,679 roads observed, 1,705 (9%) encountered one or more speeding events. The odds of speeding events were higher on interstates (Odds Ratio [OR] = 436, 95% CI: 289.77, 656.75) and freeways (OR = 750, 95% CI: 452.37, 1243.77) than on local roads. Regarding visual environments, the odds of speeding events were 1.69, 3.04, and 2.60 times higher in open-road, open residential, and leafy residential environments, respectively, than in built-up urban spaces. Despite higher odds, the speeding rates on interstates, freeways, open-road, and residential environments were lower compared to local roads and built-up urban spaces, partly because approximately half of all driving occurred on these types of roads and visual environments. Conclusion and Practical Application: Among teens with a history of traffic citations, driving on high-speed roads and in open, low- to moderately dense environments is associated with an increased risk of speeding events. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating awareness of different road designs into future driver training programs to mitigate speeding behaviors among teens.