Grandparent drivers keep children safer

US: A new report says that children who are involved in a car crash while a grandparent drives are less likely to sustain injuries compared to when a parent is behind the wheel.

According to the new report published in the journal Pediatrics, the rate of injury to children passengers was almost 0.7 percent in crashes with grandparent drivers and 1.05 percent in those that parents were driving.

The data for the study was focused on nearly 12,000 children of 15 or younger involved in crashes from the years 2003 to 2007 in the United States.”

Although the crashes with grandparent drivers were 9.5 percent of the crashes we studied, they didn’t represent 9.5 percent of the injuries,” said study co-author Dr. Flaura Koplin Winston at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Moreover, researchers found that the overall risk of injury was 33 percent lower with grandparent drivers.

When they adjusted for such factors as restraint use and model of car, results showed the 50 percent reduction in injury risk with grandparent drivers.

The results were in contrary to what the researchers had expected at the beginning of the study, says lead author Dr. Fred M. Henretig.

While it was not clear why grandparents were less involved in crashes that led to children’s injuries, the researchers suggested that there might be some “subtle differences” in parents’ and grandparents’ driving habits as there were no major differences in the type and severity of their car accidents.

“Maybe grandparents were going a little more slowly, or not following the car in front of them quite as closely,” Henretig said. Thursday, Press TV