An exploratory study of parent acceptance of sanctions for driving offenses committed by their children

Abstract

Objective

Graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems are effective at reducing young driver crashes but rely on active parental involvement. However, some parents may accept sanctions (e.g., demerit points, monetary fines) for traffic offenses committed by their children, leading to experiences of punishment avoidance by young drivers. This aim of this exploratory study was to investigate several demographic and psychosocial influences that could possibly be associated with parent acceptance of sanctions.

Method

An online survey was completed by parents of young drivers (N = 149, M = 48.88 years, SD = 4.76 years; female = 86%) from 3 Australian states. The survey included measures of sociodemographic characteristics and driving history (e.g., crash involvement), socioeconomic status, parenting style, knowledge of their child’s driving behavior, perceptions of their ability to manage their child’s driving, attitudes toward GDL, and previous or potential acceptance of demerit points or payment of fines for road offenses committed by their child.

Results

Twenty-nine percent of parents had accepted or would accept a sanction on behalf of their child. Number of children overall, number of children licensed, and household income were associated with parent acceptance of a sanction. Parenting style, attitude toward GDL restrictions, parent confidence in their knowledge of GDL restrictions and ability to manage their child’s driving, and belief that their child would follow rules were not associated with (non)acceptance of a sanction.

Conclusions

These exploratory findings suggest that family size and income may be important influences on parent acceptance of sanctions on behalf of their offending children. The findings related to the psychosocial variables are discussed considering other research and the limitations of the study.

Keywords:

• Punishment avoidance
• demerit points
• graduated driver licensing
• novice driver
• teen driver
• deterrence theory

Introduction

Young people are often subject to different legal requirements when driving than more experienced drivers, particularly in jurisdictions with graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems (Senserrick and Williams 2015; Williams 2017). Theoretically, the main mechanism contributing to the success of GDL is enforcement of regulations by police or similar authorities. However, after reviewing the available literature, Bates, Rodwell, and Matthews (2019) concluded that police were often unable or unmotivated to do so. Similarly, there is an implicit assumption that parents will monitor the driving behavior of their children to ensure that they comply with road rules and apply punishments if they do not (Simons-Morton 2007). Some studies suggested that informal deterrence in the form of parent-imposed sanctions is more effective in encouraging young driver compliance than formal sanctions imposed by police (Allen et al. 2017).

However, research examining young novice driver behavior suggests that compliance with GDL laws is less than complete (Goodwin et al. 2006; Curry 2017). For example, studies suggest that young drivers commonly disregard GDL laws including night driving curfews, peer passenger limits, and, in Australia where the current study was conducted, requirements to display “P” plates (Brookland et al. 2014; Bates et al. 2017). It is also unclear how involved parents are in GDL, with some research indicating that they may have very limited knowledge of the GDL laws applicable to their child (Brookland et al. 2014). In some cases, the behavior of parents may not support the deterrent effect of sanctions for rule breaking, but few studies have examined parents’ interactions with GDL systems (Bates and Anderson 2019). The current exploratory study investigates the instance of one such unsupportive parent interaction with GDL, examining why some parents may choose to accept sanctions for traffic violations on behalf of their young driver children.

Graduated driver licensing context

In Australia, driver licensing and police road enforcement are responsibilities of state and territory governments. Young drivers in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria are subject to comprehensive GDL systems (Senserrick and Williams 2015; Scott-Parker 2016). Each jurisdiction operates a 4-stage GDL that consists of a learner stage, followed by two provisional stages allowing independent driving and a final open or unrestricted stage. Various restrictions are applied to young people according to GDL stage. For example, each state has mandated supervised practice hour requirements for absolute novice drivers along with various restrictions on nighttime driving, peer passenger numbers, requirements to display license plates indicating their GDL stage, and bans on mobile phone use. With each GDL stage, the number of specific restrictions or their stringency reduces. For example, in Queensland, drivers with a Provisional 1 (license) are not allowed to use a mobile phone at all while driving, whereas a driver with a P2 license can use a mobile phone in hands-free mode. Though some differences exist in the application of restrictions between each of these jurisdictions, overall, each of these state-based GDL systems are highly similar.

Young people on provisional licenses in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria are subject to a more stringent demerit point program for driving violations than fully licensed drivers. Demerit points and fines, which are often accrued through automated systems (e.g., speed camera enforcement) without contact with police, are applied to the license of the registered owner of the vehicle, with the license holder being advised after the fact. A facility is in place where other license holders can advise authorities of their culpability in relation to the offense and have the demerit points applied to their license rather than that of the vehicle owner.

As such, with respect to the aims of the current study, it may be the case that (1) offenses are committed by a young driver in the vehicle registered to their parent and the parent does not advise authorities that their child was driving or (2) offenses may be committed in a vehicle registered to the child but the parent advises authorities that they were the driver of that vehicle. The result for both cases would be that the sanction is placed on the license of the parent rather than the young driver who committed the offense.

Punishment avoidance, parenting styles, and young driver road offending

Deterrence theory is the framework that underpins many road policing initiatives (Bates et al. 2012). Stafford and Warr (1993) reconceptualized classical deterrence theory and suggested punishment avoidance as a concept where a person will continue to offend if they committed an offense previously and were not punished for it. Within road policing, punishment avoidance probably occurs regularly because the chance of being apprehended for some offenses is low (Freeman et al. 2015). The examination of punishment avoidance in several studies identified it as an influence on increasing drugged driving (Watling et al. 2010; Armstrong et al. 2018), drink driving (Freeman and Watson 2006; Szogi et al. 2017), and speeding behaviors (Freeman et al. 2017).

Bates and Anderson (2019) undertook focus groups with young drivers to explore the concept of punishment avoidance. Findings of this study suggested that punishment avoidance may influence young driver behavior through several mechanisms. In this study, it was suggested that parental punishment avoidance can occur when young drivers are identified and sanctioned by police for committing an offense but parents assume responsibility for the offense and/or accept the consequences of the offense such as by paying a fine or having demerit points applied to their own license.

One potential reason for parent acceptance of sanctions relates to their parenting style; the cluster of attitudes, thoughts, cognitions, and behaviors that a parent has toward their child; and the emotional climate in which the parent’s behaviors are expressed (Darling and Steinberg 1993). Parenting style has been found to be important in the young driver context.

Ginsburg et al. (2009) found that teenagers who reported having parents with authoritative parenting styles had significantly lower crash risk and were less likely to speed, drive while intoxicated, or use a mobile phone while driving. Conversely, teenagers who had parents with an uninvolved style were less likely to use seat belts than those who had parents with an authoritative style. In another study that used Ginsburg et al. (2009) as a foundation, parents who reported greater levels of control felt more responsible for their child’s driving and concurrently were more likely to report that their child complied with licensing restrictions (Bates et al. 2020). Additionally, parents in this study who had higher levels of support provided more practical assistance to their children to help them comply with licensing restrictions. Young people whose parents reported higher levels of control were more likely to report that they complied with restrictions.

The findings reported by Ginsburg et al. (2009) and Bates et al. (2020) suggest that an authoritative parenting style may be an important positive influence on young driver behavior. Given this and the previously mentioned importance of parents within GDL systems, it is possible that parenting style also plays a role in parental punishment avoidance. However, it does not appear that any research has investigated parenting style in relation to acceptance of sanctions for their young driver children.

The current study

Sanctions such as fines and demerit points for offending that are captured automatically, such as those by manned and unmanned speed enforcement cameras, become the responsibility of the registered owner of the vehicle. This is because police cannot confirm the identity of the driver committing the offense at the time of the offense because there is no interpersonal contact with drivers. Therefore, it is assumed that the registered owner of the vehicle is driving and, if not, there is a facility for the sanction to be taken on by another driver (e.g., by statutory declaration). Though the use of automated enforcement tools is relatively uncontroversial in Australia, colloquially, in media reports (e.g., Ironside 2013), and in research (Bates and Anderson 2019), it has been suggested that some drivers may fraudulently nominate themselves as the driver to avoid the actual offender accruing demerit points or paying a financial penalty. Therefore, it is possible that parents may nominate themselves as the offending party for road offenses in place of their child. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine whether parents do indeed accept fines and demerit points on behalf of their children and, if so, to explore some of the potential sociodemographic and psychosocial factors that might influence them to do so.

Method

Participants

Participants were required to have open or unrestricted driving licenses and live in one of the three most populous Australian states, Queensland, New South Wales, or Victoria. Recruitment channels included university email lists, social media, recruitment flyers, and word of mouth. As an incentive, participants could choose to enter a prize draw for 1 of 5 $100 gift vouchers to a local department store.

Design and procedure

The data analyzed in this study consisted of responses to a subset of items in an online survey deployed as part of a larger program of research investigating how young people are taught to drive (e.g., Bates et al. 2018; Rodwell et al. 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022; Bates, Hawkins et al. 2019; Bates, Larue, et al. 2019; Horswill et al. 2021). In the overall survey, participants were initially provided information about the study and asked to tick a box to confirm that they consented to participate. First, participants responded to driving history and demographic questions. Then blocks of questions were presented to the participant randomly to minimize response bias and order effects. Some demographic questions were used to screen out participants who did not meet the overall project inclusion criteria. In some instances, and where relevant, skip logic was used to ensure that follow-up questions were asked of participants. Where appropriate, participants were asked to respond to items by thinking about their child who was most recently licensed. Data collection occurred between November 2017 and April 2018. The study received ethics approval before commencement of data collection (QUT Human Research Ethics Committee: 1700000720).

Measures

Driving history and demographic information included number of years licensed, kilometers driven per week, age (years), gender (female, male, other), license category (only open license holders were retained), number of children, number of children who had obtained a license, relationship status (married, divorced or separated, single, bereaved, de facto relationship), postcode, and a focal child’s current license (only parents of P1 and P2 drivers were retained). Participants also reported if they had been in a crash since their child was born (yes, no) and if they had accrued demerit points for driving offenses since their child’s birth on a scale ranging from (1) none to (5) a lot, lost license.

Three measures of socioeconomic status (SES) were obtained. These were employment status (full-time, part-time, casual, student, not in paid employment), household income after tax (≤$30,000, $30,001–$50,000, $50,001–$100,000, $100,000–$150,000, ≥$150,001, unsure, I prefer not to say), and education level (primary [elementary], secondary, undergraduate university, postgraduate university, and TAFE [Technical and Further Education] or other technical college). Postcode was used to categorize participants according to the Australian Standard Geographical Classification–Remoteness Areas (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2019) and was used as a proxy indicator of SES, with those living outside of major cities, on average, having lower SES than those living in major cities.

Participants were asked to report if they knew whether their child had been in a crash (yes, no, unsure, I prefer not to say) and whether their child had accrued demerit points (yes, no, unsure, I prefer not to say). Only those who reported yes or no to these items were retained for the following analyses. One item each asked participants to rate how confident they were in their own knowledge of road rules pertaining to the P1 and P2 GDL stages, respectively, on scale ranging from (1) not confident to (5) extremely confident. These items were strongly correlated (r = 0.71, P < .001) and therefore were combined into a scale representing overall parent knowledge of rules for provisional drivers. Participants also rated how confident they were, on a Likert scale ranging from (1) not very confident to (5) extremely confident, that their child would follow applicable night driving and peer passenger rules, speed limit rules, and alcohol and drug rules and whether they believed they would always display their P plates when driving. These items were combined into a scale indicating parents’ perceptions of their child’s likely compliance with GDL restrictions (α = .76, 5 items). High scores on these scales represent greater confidence in knowledge of applicable road rules and greater confidence that their child will follow GDL restrictions.

Participants reported their attitudes toward road rules for provisional drivers on four 5-point semantic differential items anchored with bad vs. good; lenient vs. strict; appropriate vs. inappropriate; and focused on safety vs. focused on regulation. Scores on the third and fourth items were reversed to align with other variables in the study such that high scores represent positive attitudes toward rules. Attitude items were combined to form a scale summarizing parent attitudes toward road rules for provisional drivers. Acceptable reliability was found with 4 items (α = .70). However, removing the item investigating leniency and strictness led to a considerable increase in reliability (α = .79). Therefore, the 3-item version of this scale without the lenience item was used in the analyses.

Parents were asked to respond to 4 items about how they would manage their child’s driving behavior. The items were rated on a scale ranging from (1) never to (5) always. The items enquired about ensuring that their child obeys road rules while in the car with them, pointing out and correcting their child’s driving errors, making and enforcing their own driving punishments for deliberately disobeying road rules, and ensuring compliance with police-administered punishments and sanctions. The 4 items were combined into a scale, although the scale reliability (α = .56) was lower than the generally accepted standard of α = .70. Removal of items did not improve the internal consistency of the scale. Parent management of novice driver behavior has been suggested as an important aspect of GDL systems, particularly regarding potentially reducing crash involvement and offending (Simons-Morton 2007). Therefore, this scale was retained for analyses but with the proviso that conclusions based on it should be treated cautiously. Higher scores on this scale indicate stronger beliefs in the efficacy a parent has in managing their child’s driving behaviors.

Influential theorizing and empirical parenting research have commonly conceptualized parenting styles as typologies (Mandara 2003). Parenting styles were investigated based on the methods employed by Ginsburg et al. (2009) and Bates et al. (2020). Four items investigated parents’ perceptions of their level of support (1 item), monitoring (2 items), and enforcement of rules (1 item). Parents responded using a Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly agree to (5) strongly disagree. Scores on these items were reversed to align with other variables in the study such that high scores indicate that they perceive that they provide greater amounts of support, monitoring, and rule enforcement. The monitoring and rule enforcement items were combined to create a single variable representing control. Participant responses were used to categorize participants into authoritative (high support, high control), authoritarian (low support, high control), permissive (high support, low control), or uninvolved (low support, low control) parenting styles. For the current study, a score of 3 or below was considered low control or low support; a score of 4 or above was considered as high control or high support.

Finally, participants reported the likelihood that they had paid or would pay fines for traffic offenses for their child or the likelihood that they had accepted or would accept demerit points for driving offenses committed by their child on Likert scales ranging from (1) never to (5) always. The wording of these items was left to be less than definite for 2 reasons. First, the proportion of the population of parents who had previously paid a fine or accepted demerit points for their children was highly uncertain and, as such, this wording left open the possibility for those who had not performed this behavior but who would consider it to respond accordingly. Second, these behaviors are quite sensitive, controversial, and illegal. Thus, allowing some latitude in response by not specifically asking individuals to incriminate themselves (i.e., rather than only including those who had performed the behavior) alleviates some of the potential for self-presentation biases.

Data preparation and statistical analysis

A data set of 1,211 cases was downloaded from the online survey application. As noted, the data used in this study were part of a larger study investigating several aspects related to young driver behavior and driver education. Thus, cases were removed if they did not contain responses to all items (i.e., the individual had simply opened and shut the survey), did not contain all responses to the key independent and dependent variables described earlier, did not indicate that they had any children or at least 1 child in the licensing system, were unlicensed, or did not reside in Queensland, New South Wales, or Victoria. Dichotomous variables representing several sociodemographic measures were created to facilitate a more succinct examination of the data. Cases where parents had reported “unsure,” “I prefer not to say,” or “other” were removed from the data set when making these new variables. After removing cases, a final sample of 149 cases was retained for the analyses.

In creating the dichotomous variables, some loss in granularity in the analyses was inevitable. However, by combining responses this way, all participant data was represented in some way in the following analyses, and a dichotomous categorical variable representing parent (non)acceptance of a sanction on behalf of their child was created. This variable was used as the independent variable in the analyses that aimed to identify important characteristics of parents who choose to (not) accept a sanction for a driving offense on behalf of their child. A full description of all variables included in the analyses is provided Table B1 in Appendix B (see online supplement).

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the parents participating in the study (N = 149).

Variable	Mean (SE)	Mode	Median	Min–Max
Age (years)	48.88 (4.76)	46	49	40–65
Number of children	2.67 (0.96)	2	2.67	1–7
Number of children licensed	1.87 (0.71)	2	2.0	1–4
Driving experience (years)	31.54 (5.01)	30	31	21–48
Driving exposure (km)	290.96 (183.18)	200	262	12–796

In terms of the analyses, first, preliminary investigations to examine differences based on sociodemographic and driving history variables were carried out to comprehensively understand the data. The analyses included Pearson and point-biserial correlations, t tests, Pearson chi-square tests, Fisher’s exact tests, Mann-Whitney U tests, and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Nonparametric tests were conducted if the data did not conform to assumptions required for parametric tests, such as if data were highly skewed. Statistically significant findings are reported. All statistical tests were assessed against an alpha of .05. Analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS (v27) (IBM Corp 2020).

Results

Sample characteristics

One hundred forty-nine parents of provisionally (intermediate) licensed young novice participated in this study. Descriptive statistics summarizing the age, number of children, number of children licensed, driving experience (number of years licensed), and driving exposure of the participants are presented in Table 1. Eighty-six percent of the sample identified as female, 72% of parents reported that they had been in a crash, and 64% reported accruing demerit points since their child was born. Most parents reported being married (80%) and were employed either full-time (62%) or part-time (23%). Ninety-one percent of participants had a household income of $50,001 or greater, with 37% reporting that their household income after tax was $150,001 or more. The sample was highly educated; 72% of the sample had either an undergraduate or postgraduate university degree and 17% had a technical or trade qualification. Postcodes were examined against the Australian Standard Geographical Classification–Remoteness Area (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2019) to categorize participants as those living in major cities and inner regional, outer regional, remote, or very remote locations. Most parents lived in major cities (72%), which afford residents easy access to a range of high-quality goods and services. These indicators suggest that, overall, the sample consists mainly of highly educated and reasonably wealthy Australians. A detailed examination of sample characteristics is provided in Appendix C (see online supplement), including a breakdown of sample characteristics based on the dichotomized variables.

Descriptive statistics

The descriptive results presented in Table 2 suggest that parents had confidence in their own knowledge of GDL rules, their child’s rule-following behavior, and their ability to manage their child’s driving and had positive attitudes toward GDL. Conversely, parents indicated that they were not likely, on average, to pay fines or accept demerit points for their children. Examination of bivariate correlations indicated that parents’ attitudes and confidence that their child would follow GDL rules were weakly and significantly correlated (r = 0.17, P = .03). Payment of fines and acceptance of demerit points were moderately correlated (r = 0.41, P < .001). Histograms depicting the distribution of each of the constructs in Table 2 are provided in Appendix A (see online supplement).

Table 2. Means, SDs, and other descriptive statistics.

Variable	Mean (SD)	Mode	Median	Min–Max
Confidence in knowledge of GDL rules	3.91 (0.71)	4	4	2–5
Confidence that child follows rules	4.49 (0.55)	5	4	2–5
Confidence in managing their child’s driving	4.36 (0.64)	5	4	2–5
Attitude toward GDL	4.34 (0.85)	5	5	1–5
Payment of fines	1.52 (1.04)	1	1	1–5
Acceptance of demerit points	1.24 (0.67)	1	1	1–5

Most parents were classified as having an authoritative (60%) or uninvolved (31%) parenting style. The remainder of the sample was classified as having a permissive parenting style (9%); no parents were classified as having an authoritarian parenting style. The parenting style a participant was classified as having did not statistically differentiate participants on their sociodemographic characteristics. However, a Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that a significant but small difference existed in parents’ perceptions of their ability to manage their child’s driving behavior based on their parenting style, H (2) = 7.48, P = .02, η² = 0.05. Pairwise comparisons revealed that permissive parents had lower confidence in their ability (m = 3.91, SD = 0.65) than both uninvolved parents (m = 4.38, SD = 0.63), P = .04, and authoritative parents (m = 4.41, SD = 0.63), P = .02.

Parents with a household income of $50,000 or below (median = 3) reported significantly less positive attitudes toward GDL restrictions than those with an household income of $50,001 and above (median = 5), U (N1 = 13, N2 = 136) = 597.0, z = −2.06, P = .04, η² = 0.03. However, it is noted that the sample of parents who had a household income of $50,000 or below was small. Parents reporting previous crash experience (median = 4.5) reported significantly lower confidence that their child would follow GDL rules than those who did not report previous crash experience (median = 4.7), U (N1 = 107, N2 = 42) = 2,776.50, z = 2.28, P = .02, η² = 0.03.

Comparison of parents who have accepted or would accept a sanction with those who have not or would not accept a sanction

The sample was decomposed into groups contrasting (1) parents who had not or would not accept a sanction on behalf of their children (71%) with (2) parents who had accepted or would accept a sanction (29%). Within this second group, 15% would pay fines only, 11% would both pay fines and accept demerit points, and 3% would accept demerit points only. Breakdowns of the sample characteristics and variables of interest are presented in Tables 3 to 5, including relevant statistical tests.

Table 3. Breakdown of continuous variables by parent acceptance or nonacceptance of a sanction.

	Do not accept sanction (n = 105)			Accept sanction (n = 44)
Variable	Mean (SD)	Median	Min–Max	Mean (SD)	Median	Min–Max	Test statistics
Age	49.89 (5.61)	49.5	40–65	48.47 (4.31)	48	40–59	t (147) = −1.67, P = .10
Number of children	2.83 (1.0)	3	1–7	2.3 (0.73)	2	1–5	U (N1 = 105, N = 44) = 1,573.50, z = −3.31, P < .001, d = 0.5
Number of children licensed	1.96 (0.76)	2	1–4	1.64 (0.53)	2	1–3	t (147) = 2.59, P = .01, d = 0.5
Driving experience	31.25 (4.58)	31	21–41	32.23 (5.90)	30.50	22–48	t (147) = −1.09, P = .28
Driving exposure	297.96 (188.15)	272.00	12–796	273.91 (171.60)	250.00	44–778	t (147) = 0.73, P = .47
Knowledge of GDL	3.97 (0.71)	4	2–5	3.75 (0.71)	4	2–5	t (147) = 1.74, P = .08
Child follows GDL	4.52 (0.49)	5	2–5	4.40 (0.69)	4	2–5	t (61.68) = 1.05, P = .30
Manages child driving	4.37 (0.68)	4	2–5	4.32 (0.53)	4	3–5	t (147) = 0.41, P = .68
Parent attitude	4.39 (0.84)	5	2–5	4.22 (0.89)	5	1–5	t (147) = 1.12, P = .27

Table 4. Breakdown of dichotomized demographic variables by parent acceptance or non-acceptance of a sanction.

Variable	Would not accept sanction (n = 105) (%)	Would accept sanction (n = 44) (%)	Test statistics
Gender			χ^2 (1) = 0.17, P = .68
Female	87	84
Male	13	16
Relationship type			χ^2 (1) = 0.50, P = .48
Married	79	84
Other relationship	21	16
Household income			Fisher’s exact test, P = .02
≤$50,000	5	18
≥$50,001	95	19
Education			χ^2 (1) = 1.25, P = .26
Secondary	9	16
Tertiary	91	84
Employment			χ^2 (1) = 0.29, P = .59
Full-time
Other Location			χ^2 (1) = 0.58, P = .45
Major city	74	68
Other location	26	32
Parenting style			Fisher’s exact test, P = .70
Authoritative	62	57
Permissive	8	11
Uninvolved	30	32
Authoritarian	0	0

Table 5. Breakdown of dichotomized driving-related variables by parent acceptance or nonacceptance of a sanction.

Variable	Would not accept sanction (n = 105) (%)	Would accept sanction (n = 44) (%)	Test statistics
Crash experience			χ^2 (1) = 0.06, P = .81
Yes	72	70
No	28	30
Demerit point accrual			χ^2 (1) = 2.17, P = .14
Yes	60	73
No	40	27
Child license type			χ^2 (1) = 1.01, P = .31
P1	67	75
P2	33	25
Child crash experience			χ^2 (1) = 1.58, P = .21
Yes	16	25
No	84	75
Child demerit point accrual			χ^2 (1) = 0.14, P = .71
Yes	11	14
No	89	16

Parents who had not or would not accept a sanction reported having more children than those who had accepted or would accept a sanction. Similarly, parents who had not or would not accept a sanction had more children in the licensing system than parents who had accepted or would accept a sanction. The proportion of parents who had not or would not accept a sanction and had an income of $50,000 or below was significantly smaller than the proportion of parents with an income of $50,001 and above. The proportion of parents who had accepted or would accept a sanction and had an income of $50,000 and below was significantly larger than parents with an income of $50,001 and above (26.5%). Age, driving experience, driving exposure, gender, crash involvement, demerit point accrual, relationship type, education, employment, location, child license type, child crash involvement, and child demerit point accrual were not significantly different based on (non)acceptance of a sanction. No significant differences between parents who had accepted or would accept a sanction and those who had not or would not were found when examining parents’ knowledge of GDL rules, confidence in rule following by their child, confidence in their ability to manage their child’s driving behavior, attitudes toward GDL, or parenting style.

Discussion

This exploratory study sought to investigate some factors that may contribute to parent choices to accept sanctions for the road offending of their novice driver children. The findings suggest that, overall, most parents are unlikely to accept any type of sanction on behalf of their child. Thus, parent-mediated punishment avoidance experienced by young drivers may not be a substantial issue for road safety. Nevertheless, a proportion of parents (29%) reported that they would accept or have accepted a sanction, indicating that this issue is worthy of continued investigation.

A significant moderate positive association was found between the 2 types of sanctions examined, suggesting that though some relationship exists, parents who do choose to accept a sanction may differentiate between paying fines and accepting demerit points on behalf of their children. Notably, out of the proportion of parents in the sample who had accepted or would accept a sanction, the smallest percentage would accept demerits only, whereas the percentages of parents who would pay fines only and both pay fines and accept demerit points were larger and relatively similar.

Thus, it may be that parents believe that administering demerit points is a more appropriate or effective sanction for their young driver children than requiring them to pay a fine. Alternatively, this finding may also reflect parents’ knowledge that their children may not have the financial means to pay what are often large sums of money for their driving offenses. In this case, a parent may choose to ensure that their child retains their mobility by paying the fine for their child. If a child experienced further sanction (e.g., lost their license) because of a previous unpaid fine, there may be larger ramifications for both the young person and the family (e.g., increased need for the parent to provide transport for their child). It is noted that in the jurisdictions the sample was drawn from, demerit point accrual and monetary fines generally co-occur, which may be the reason for the relatively large proportion of parents reporting that they would both pay fines and accept demerit points. It would be beneficial for future research to investigate the reasons for the disparity between the proportions of parents who accept demerit points only and pay fines only and to investigate the group who would both pay fines and accept demerit points with greater specificity than was possible in the current study.

Three variables were statistically different depending on whether parents had accepted or would accept a sanction and those who would not. The first 2 of these variables relate to family size such that those parents with more children, both in general and who had entered the licensing system, were unlikely to accept a sanction on behalf of their child. There are several possible (speculative) reasons for this finding. Parents with more children may perceive the need to act equitably with respect to their children. This means that if they accept a sanction on behalf of one child, they must do the same for their other children. As such, parents may choose to make the status quo not accepting a sanction on behalf of their children. However, this speculation should be considered in the context of a substantial body of research that indicates that parents do often parent their children differently, and this differential treatment may have wide-ranging effects on a young person’s development (Daniels and Plomin 1985; Scholte et al. 2007). Alternatively, parents with more children may have less financial ability to pay several fines accrued by multiple children, again meaning that the status quo for these families is to not accept a sanction (although see below in relation to findings regarding family income). It is noted, however, that number of children is a very crude measure of family-related factors that fails to capture myriad other potentially important variables, including parenting style, which is discussed below. Thus, the suggestions regarding the connection between family size provided here are very tentative and should be treated with a high degree of caution.

The findings related to income are somewhat counterintuitive, suggesting that parents with less financial discretion were more likely to accept a sanction for their children than those with greater ability to absorb costs (e.g., pay fines). This seemingly contradicts the aforementioned reasoning connecting family size and financial capacity to pay fines suggested above. However, the current study was exploratory in nature, and it is noted that dichotomization of the income variable reduced the specificity with which analyses were conducted. It is also noted that the lower income group in the current study was very small, the other variables related to SES (e.g., employment, education, location) did not return statistically significant differences, and, overall, the participants in the study were relatively middle class. As such, caution is warranted with respect to the findings related to income.

Nevertheless, the counterintuitive nature of the findings suggests that future research could investigate income more thoroughly as a variable of interest. Moreover, household income had several associations with other demographic factors, which are reported in Appendix A. Therefore, it may be important to investigate the impact of interactions between income and family size, or the other variables examined in the current study, on acceptance of sanctions.

The parent psychosocial factors investigated in the current study do not appear to be important variables related to acceptance of sanctions by parents. A parent’s confidence in their knowledge of laws that apply to their child, that their child acts in rule-abiding ways while driving, or their own ability to manage their child’s driving was not statistically different when compared between groups, nor were attitudes toward the specific rules governing their child’s driving. This contrasts with other research that has found, broadly, that psychosocial factors and relationships are important in young driver risk taking (Cassarino and Murphy 2018).

The findings of the current study do not align with those in other studies of parenting style within young driver research (e.g., Ginsburg et al. 2009; Bates et al. 2020). Parenting style was not a statistically important variable in the current study. The only statistical test involving psychosocial or parenting style variables that found a significant result indicated that permissive parents had lower confidence in their ability to manage their child’s driving behavior than authoritative and uninvolved parents. This finding may reflect that parenting style is not related to acceptance of sanctions. Alternatively, it may be that parenting style has an indirect relationship with acceptance of sanctions that was not able to be tested in the current exploratory research. As such, future research could focus on a more thorough examination of parenting style in the context of acceptance of sanctions for child road offending.

In addition to the applied implications of this research, this study further develops our understanding of punishment avoidance. Given that punishment avoidance is likely to be a relatively common experience on the road (e.g., Freeman and Watson 2006; Watling et al. 2010; Freeman et al. 2015, 2017; Szogi et al. 2017; Armstrong et al. 2018), it is important that we identify the mechanisms by which it occurs. This study expands on the findings of Bates and Anderson (2019) by confirming that a minority of parents may be willing to help their children avoid punishment for road offending and that this can occur by either paying monetary fines, accepting the demerit point penalty, or both. Thus, even when some young people are caught and punished by police for committing a road offense, some may avoid (fully or partially) punishment through the actions of their parents.

Limitations

This study was an important initial step to identify some of the motivators and reasons that lead parents to accept or not accept a sanction on behalf of their road offending child. However, there are several limitations that should be improved upon or eliminated in future studies. First, the study used a self-report online survey to collect data about what could be considered a controversial or threatening topic (i.e., the behavior could be considered illegal or immoral). Considering this, it is possible that some level of self-presentation bias may be present in the findings; that is, some parents may not have accurately reported their acceptance of sanctions to avoid incriminating themselves or because of social desirability bias. In some ways, this issue is similar to other offending behaviors such as unlicensed driving, for which it is difficult to obtain accurate prevalence statistics (Watson 2003). Due to the length of the survey with which the data for the current study were collected, no measure of social desirability bias was included. As such, future studies could include a control for this possibility (Larson 2019) or develop and employ more observational or objective methods of data collection to gain a more accurate measure of this parent behavior.

Second, the sample size was relatively small overall, with the proportion of the overall sample that identified as being open to accepting a sanction even smaller. This impacts the generalizability of the study. Because of the small sample size and relatively large number of variables examined, the choice was made to dichotomize several variables. This choice was made to ensure representation of all variables in robust statistical tests that could be conducted with a relatively small sample, such as t tests. However, in doing so, some of the granular detail was lost from the analyses and important associations between variables may be hidden or lost. Moreover, it is noted that, overall, the sample was relatively homogenous and comprised financially secure, highly educated parents living primarily in areas that provided access to a large range of services and products. The sample overwhelmingly consisted of those identifying as female. Future research should aim to recruit a larger sample that includes individuals with greater geographical, income, and gender diversity to facilitate more comprehensive statistical techniques, a greater level of representativeness, and therefore greater generalizability of the findings.

Third, several of the scales used in the study consisted of 2 or 3 items. The parenting style scale, though drawn from previous research (Ginsburg et al. 2009; Bates et al. 2020), consisted of only 4 items. Most of these scales demonstrated strong internal consistency or associations, suggesting that they are viable for use. The use of compact assessment scales was dictated by the desire for these variables to be included within the survey deployed for the larger project within which the current data were collected. However, it may be that the use of more comprehensive scales would lead to increased levels of sensitivity and more robust findings. Finally, it is noted that the data were collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have had wide-ranging and continuing impacts on the driving behavior of individuals due to government-mandated restrictions on movement and the enforcement of road rules in Australia.

In summary, some parents reported that they accept sanctions on behalf of their children for driving offenses. This has potential ramifications for road policing, which may be rendered less effective due to experiences of punishment avoidance. The current exploratory study found that family size and income may be associated with the likelihood that parents accept or do not accept fines or demerits for the illegal driving behaviors of their children. Conversely, psychosocial and relational motivators such as attitudes toward and knowledge about GDL and parenting styles were not important factors. However, future research should endeavor to more comprehensively investigate these and other factors to identify ways to ensure that appropriate parental management of a child’s driving and young driver road offending and crash involvement are reduced.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges Professor Narelle Haworth, Professor Barry Watson, Associate Professor Lyndel Bates, Associate Professor Gregoire Larue, Dr. Ashleigh Filtness, Alana Hawkins, Levi Anderson, and Marina Alexander, who were involved in designing and conducting the larger research program in which the current study was conducted. In particular, Associate Professor Bates is thanked for providing feedback on the initial drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (Project LP140100409). The Australian Research Council was not involved in conducting the research.