Dr. Shannon Roberts “simply loved driving” as a teenager, but when her younger brother began to drive, she realized that the information teenagers are receiving in their Driver’s Education courses was inadequate. “Driver’s Education teaches you the basic skills you need to operate a car. It doesn’t teach you the higher order skills you need to avoid a crash,” Roberts said. When she later learned that low SES teenagers face double the crash risk of middle and high SES teenagers she became interested in understanding the causes of these socioeconomic differences in teen driving behaviors, so she could develop effective interventions.

Roberts, 2018-19 CRF Family Research Scholar, is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Roberts teaches Human Factors Design Engineering which matches human abilities and limitations to the technology they are using. In her CRF proposal, Roberts developed a training program designed to mitigate the risks of low SES drivers who face unique challenges such as: driving in high traffic, urban areas, operating older cars, driving on roads that  may are not well maintained, and more often carrying multiple  passengers. She adapted a previous intervention, eSAFE (Safety Awareness through Focused Evaluation), in order to address the specific driving challenges of low SES teenagers. She plans to assess the new intervention through a rigorous study using a portable driving simulator that she will bring to UMass Center in Springfield to determine if the intervention improves hazard-anticipation behavior.

Roberts submitted her NIH grant proposal in February 2019. “It was an intense process,” she recalled. She had written NIH grant proposals before and was excited to learn how to improve her grants through her CRF experience. “What’s different about my research,” Roberts said, “is that it in addition to working with human subjects, my research also involves the cost associated with driving simulator research.” Roberts chose Springfield due to its proximity to UMass, its diverse population, and its large population of teenagers who are of a low SES status.

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, Roberts had a love for Legos and she cites this as the reason for her original interest in engineering. Roberts received a B.S. and an M.S in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT). She then went on to receive her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. If Robert’s grant proposal is funded, she will begin her research in September 2019.