Teens
participating in the awareness campaign conducted a news conference in
San Antonio. (Photo courtesy of Texas Transportation Institute)
(College Station)—While teenage drivers are involved in 15 percent of all traffic crashes nationwide, their involvement in Texas is 50 percent greater. Texas is a national leader in a serious problem, but an innovative new program could soon make the state a leader in solving this problem.
Teens in the Driver Seat (TDS), a creation of the Texas Transportation Institute, is a peer-to-peer effort designed to reduce the frequency of fatal crashes involving teen drivers. Unlike any other safety program targeting young people behind the wheel, it involves the target audience directly to help develop and deliver the right message.
Early indications suggest the idea is working, as it has taken root in several different parts of the state, with several others currently reaching out to TTI staff for help in addressing the problem in their communities.
More than 6,000 teens die every year in traffic crashes, the number-one cause of death, by far, for this age group.
“That’s the equivalent of a commercial airliner loaded with teenagers crashing to the ground every week for an entire year,” said Russell Henk, a TTI research engineer and TDS program director. “But that’s not how these tragedies happen; they happen one or two at a time, which is why this problem isn’t getting the attention we believe it deserves.”
Federal officials are now using the word “epidemic” in describing its gravity. And the problem is keenly felt in Texas, where each year crashes claim the lives of some 500 teens, robbing not only families, but also the state, of the potential their lives represent.
The peer-to-peer strategy has proven successful in other applications, such as teen court and efforts to curb smoking among young people, but it’s never been used for driving safety for the highest-risk group of drivers on the road.
TDS starts with an effort to inform and educate its audience about the real risks for teen drivers. And contrary to conventional belief, alcohol is not the greatest risk for young drivers. In fact, alcohol is a factor in only 12 percent of crashes involving the youngest drivers on the road.
What risks are even greater? The list includes driving at night, too many teen passengers, distractions such as cell phones, and speeding combined with low safety-belt use.
“Two decades of public service advertising on the topic of drunk driving have done a great deal of good,” Henk said, “but if that’s all we talk about, we’re missing almost 90 percent of the problem as it relates to teen drivers.”
Teens
are guiding the effort to reduce fatal traffic crashes and promoting their
work through news conferences. (Photo courtesy of Texas Transportation
Institute)
TDS brings together the best available talents of TTI’s traffic operations and safety experts, along with those of the agency’s communications and social marketing professionals. The result is an award-winning program that gives high school teams across the state a wide array of resources to implement the program at the grassroots level to save young lives.
Teens in cities as big as San Antonio (pop. 1.2 million) or as small as Louise (pop. 967) are guiding the development of program tools—wristbands, slogans, testimonial videos and more—and then delivering those tools and associated messages to their peers. And along the way, they’re answering surveys before and after the program to gauge progress and, with TTI staff assistance, continuing to refine TDS to make sure it’s as effective as possible.
The developers of TDS walk a fine line—providing the support, knowledge and resources that young people need, but taking a back seat when it comes to allowing the teens to drive the creativity and delivery of many program elements. When the topic is strategy and science, the teens seek the insight of their TTI partners. When there’s a question about creative approach or delivery, the TTI staffers seek the opinions of the teens.
TDS exemplifies the A&M System’s commitment to serving the people of Texas in new and innovative ways. The program has expanded to El Paso and Tyler, and will soon spring up in Corpus Christi and Odessa. The problem of teen driving crashes and fatalities didn’t reach epidemic proportions overnight, and it won’t be reversed that quickly, either.
“We’re working to stop the number-one killer of teenagers in America,” Henk said, “and we’re doing it one community at a time.”