Grandma! Grab the keys to the Porsche! Timmy has baseball practice!
LOLz!
All joking aside, a new study shows that kids are twice as safe with their grandparents behind the wheel than they would be with their parents.
Dr. Fred Henretig, emergency medicine attending physician at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, came to that surprising conclusion after looking at data on car crashes involving children in 15 states and Washington, D.C.; the data were collected by an insurance company between 2003 and 2007.
It’s long been known that older people get into more car accidents than younger drivers, so Henretig and his colleagues figured their study would simply confirm what everyone already knew: that children’s grandparents would be more likely than their parents to put kids in danger while shuttling them around.
In fact, the researchers found that grandparents were half as likely as parents to cause injury to children. “We were very surprised by the finding that most people’s intuition turned out to be wrong,” Henretig says. “What we learned was that grandparents drive very, very cautiously when their grandchildren are on board, making a special effort to drive safely.”
The five years of statistics come from reports of almost 218,000 kids. 10% of those accidents had Grandma or Grandpa driving, and only responsible for 7% for injuries to kids under 16 years old.
These statistics remained important even when other variables were introduced. Like gender and seatbelt use. Interestingly enough, it was grandparents who ignored safety belt procedures — 25% of the group.
But also interesting is the idea that the grandparents didn’t get into less accidents than the parents, just that the kids were safer.
Something to think about the next time Pop-Pop wants to drive!
[Image via AP Images.]