A program that has teenagers and parents sign driving “agreements” helps keep kids from driving under potentially hazardous conditions, according to the results of a new study.

The program, known as Checkpoints, educates parents about the risks new teenage drivers face, and encourages them to strictly limit the circumstances under which their newly licensed teens can take to the road.

In the new study, reported in the American Journal of Public Health, parents who participated in the program were still maintaining relatively tight limits on their teenagers’ driving one year after they’d been licensed.

Driving late at night, on high-speed roads, in bad weather or with other teenagers in the car, are among the factors that can increase teenagers’ crash risk.

Since the 1990s, many U.S. states have responded to these statistics by setting laws that license drivers younger than 18 on a “graduated” basis. Teenagers first get licenses that impose curfews and other driving limits, and those with clean driving records can move on to receive full licenses after a given period.

The problem with such policies is that they’re fairly “passive,” with police enforcement being hard to accomplish, according to Dr. Mark Klebanoff of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in Bethesda, Maryland.

“They’re a good start, but they need to be enforced,” said Klebanoff, who directs the agency’s division of epidemiology, statistics and prevention research.

“At the end of the day,” he noted in an interview, “much of the enforcement falls to parents.”

Research, however, has shown that parents often allow teenagers greater driving freedom than experts deem safe.

This is where the Checkpoints program is designed to step in, according to Klebanoff. It alerts parents to teen driving hazards they might not think of, then gives them a way - in the form of a written driving “agreement” - to spell out the driving limits they expect their newly licensed teenagers to follow.

The idea of a written contract between parents and teens is not new, Klebanoff said, noting that some states, and even some insurance companies, make them available to parents.

It’s the education part of the program, involving a video and series of newsletters sent to families, which is different, according to Klebanoff.

Many parents, he said, may recognize the importance of always knowing where their teenagers are going and when they will return home, but they may not realize that crash risks go up when, for instance, their children drive with other teenagers in the car.

The new study, which was led by NICHD researcher Dr. Bruce G. Simons-Morton, included 420 parents of 16-year-olds who had just gotten their learner’s permit in Connecticut. In Connecticut, teenager can receive a license after 4 months if they have completed a driver’s education program, or after 6 months if they have not completed the program.

Parents and their children were randomly assigned to the Checkpoints program or to serve as part of a comparison group.

In previous work, the researchers had already found that compared with other parents, those who went through the program imposed more limits on their kids during their first three months of driving.

The latest findings show that these parents were still tougher in enforcing driving limits one year after their teenagers were licensed, although the rules were generally relaxed.

“Kids are very good at negotiating, and playing on parents’ weaknesses,” Klebanoff noted, and this program seems to have helped parents stand their ground on driving restrictions.

Ongoing analysis of the program, he said, is looking into whether it can cut teenagers’ crash rates as well.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, March 2005.