快猫短视频

IF YOU鈥橰E a menace behind the wheel of a car then your children will probably
be bad drivers too. American researchers have found that the offspring of
drivers with a bad accident record are also likely to have a disproportionate
number of accidents when they start to drive themselves.

鈥淚f parents set a bad example it is logical that the child will follow suit,
says Jane Eason, a spokeswoman for Britain鈥檚 Royal Society for the Prevention of
Accidents. 鈥淧arents should set an example. It鈥檚 never too early to teach people
about road safety.鈥�

Susan Ferguson of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and her
colleagues looked at the accident records of 140,000 families in North Carolina,
comparing the records of parents with their children between the ages of 18 and
21. They found that the children of parents who had been in at least three
crashes in the previous five years were 22 per cent more likely to have crashed
their car than the children of parents who had not had an accident.

The researchers found a similar link for traffic violations, such as
exceeding the speed limit and running a red light. If the parents had three or
more violations, their children were 38 per cent more likely to have broken
traffic laws. Sons were twice as likely to have broken traffic laws as
daughters. However, children from single-parent households had a slightly better
accident record鈥攑ossibly because these families are likely to drive less,
the researchers say.

The findings also confirmed that the accident record of this group of
teenagers was far worse than older drivers鈥� records. 鈥淭eens are at high risk
when they drive,鈥� says Ferguson. 鈥淏ut I think parents need to be aware that they
could be serving as role models for their children both before they are licensed
and when they are learning to drive.鈥�