The next time the grandparents offer to take the children you may want to thank them and then let them know they are also better drivers than you. According to a new study, children are twice as safe when they ride with their grandparents in comparison to parents. It seems that parents may have to endure one more lecture about safe driving from their parents.

Generally, older drivers are at a greater risk of getting into a car accident than younger drivers because the slower reflexes of older drivers increase the risk of dangerous driving. Sticking with the statistic that older drivers get into more car accidents than younger drivers, researchers believed grandparents would be more likely to get into a car accident when their grandchildren were passengers in comparison to parents. It turns out that grandparents are half as likely as parents to cause injury to children in car accidents.

Researchers looked at five years of car accident information that involved almost 218,000 children. Of those car accidents, grandparents were behind the wheel 10 percent of the time, but were only responsible for seven percent of the total injuries to children under age 16. Even after different factors like proportion of accidents were taken into account, grandparents still had a statistically safer driving record than parents. Researchers learned that grandparents drive more carefully when their grandchildren are on board.

Even though older drivers are more likely to get into car accidents, they also retain safer driving habits than younger drivers. Older drivers take fewer chances on the road and do not make as many risky lane changes as younger drivers. They also do not speed as often and are not as likely to take long road trips. Apparently, the researchers also forgot to factor in a grandparent's love.

Source: healthland.time.com, "Kids are safer in the car with their grandparents behind the wheel," Alice Park, 7/18/11