Increasing Seat Belt Wearing and Decreasing Handheld Phone Use While Driving

Impaired Driving Clinical Trial

Official title:

Behavioral Interventions to Increase Seat Belt Wearing and Decrease Handheld Phone Use While Driving

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT05469477
• Other study ID #: 851411
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: March 12, 2023
• Est. completion date: June 29, 2023

Study information

• Verified date: September 2023
• Source: University of Pennsylvania
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The study team is proposing to conduct a randomized controlled trial to determine the effectiveness of behavioral and financial incentives on phone use while driving and seat belt adherence. Each arm will receive a support text if their app is not collecting data. The behavioral engagement intervention includes persuasive education, mental contrasting with implementation intentions, customized habit tips, weekly feedback about participants' streaks, and encouraging SMS texts. The two financial incentive interventions add on weekly raffles or shared pots for participants with perfect streaks.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 1139
• Est. completion date: June 29, 2023
• Est. primary completion date: June 29, 2023
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Are a GM/OnStar customer.
• Are 18 or older.
• Meet minimum trip requirements.
• Uses vehicle with OnStar
• At least 5 weeks of baseline trip data with >=8 trips/week at baseline on average
• Baseline seat belt use <= 75% on trips less than 2 miles and <= 90 on trips greater than 2 miles
• English reading ability
• Have an email address
• Have a smartphone with iPhone iOS 12 or later or Android OS 7 or later

Exclusion Criteria:

• You are unable to read and understand English

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Distracted Driving
• Impaired Driving

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Persuasive education
The research team will use psychology and communications research to present information about seat belts and distracted driving in a way that builds intrinsic motivation to change. Because positively framed messages are more effective at promoting seat belt wearing, the team's messaging will employ this framing. Education will address common reasons that survey participants give for not consistently buckling up or for phone use while driving.
• WOOP (aka, mental contrasting with implementation intentions., Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan)
Participants will receive an intervention on improving driving behavior with a specific goal in mind and how to reach that goal. Participants will do this by thinking through 4 parts: a wish, an outcome, an obstacle and a plan. This has been shown to build motivation, and help achieve the desired change.
• Customized Habit Tips
Participants will receive weekly text-message tips, informed by findings from survey responses, plus reminders to address stated obstacles.
• Raffle Financial Incentive
Each week, participants who adhere to seat belt use or abstain from phone use while driving get a chance at prize money. One winner will be randomly chosen for each target behavior and earn prize money; the rest will not receive compensation.
• Shared Pot Financial Incentive
This will be identical to the raffle incentive, except that each week participants who adhere to seat belt use or abstain from phone use while driving will be guaranteed an equal share of prize money.
• Weekly SMS Support text
Participants will receive a support SMS to troubleshoot, etc. if the Way to Drive app is not collecting trip data.
• Weekly SMS Encouragement
Those who have a perfect streak going midway through each week will receive an additional encouraging message cheering them on.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Pennsylvania	General Motors (GM)

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

References & Publications (4)

Dingus TA, Guo F, Lee S, Antin JF, Perez M, Buchanan-King M, Hankey J. Driver crash risk factors and prevalence evaluation using naturalistic driving data. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Mar 8;113(10):2636-41. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1513271113. Epub 2016 Feb 22. — View Citation

Gershon P, Sita KR, Zhu C, Ehsani JP, Klauer SG, Dingus TA, Simons-Morton BG. Distracted Driving, Visual Inattention, and Crash Risk Among Teenage Drivers. Am J Prev Med. 2019 Apr;56(4):494-500. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2018.11.024. Epub 2019 Feb 21. — View Citation

Klauer SG, Guo F, Simons-Morton BG, Ouimet MC, Lee SE, Dingus TA. Distracted driving and risk of road crashes among novice and experienced drivers. N Engl J Med. 2014 Jan 2;370(1):54-9. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa1204142. — View Citation

Simons-Morton BG, Guo F, Klauer SG, Ehsani JP, Pradhan AK. Keep your eyes on the road: young driver crash risk increases according to duration of distraction. J Adolesc Health. 2014 May;54(5 Suppl):S61-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.11.021. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Proportion of trips with seat belt use	Calculated as the number of trips during which a driver's seat belt click was detected, divided by total number of trips (defined as 1/10 of a mile or greater).	105 days
Secondary	Seconds of active (handheld) phone use per hour of driving	This is a composite outcome that measures the proportion of total trip time in which the driver is engaged in handheld phone call use or non-call handheld use (e.g. texting, swiping, and typing), as measured by the Way to Drive app.	105 days