US grandparents safest drivers on road, study says

CHICAGO - US kids may be safest in cars when grandma or grandpa are driving instead of mom or dad, according to study results that even made the researchers do a double-take.

"We were surprised to discover that the injury rate was considerably lower in crashes where grandparents were the drivers," said Fred Henretig, an emergency medicine specialist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the study's lead author.

Previous evidence indicates that car crashes are more common among older drivers, mostly those beyond age 65. The study looked at injuries rather than who had more crashes, and found that children's risk for injury was 50 percent lower when riding with grandparents than with parents.