TPO Talk: May is National Youth Traffic Safety Month

Car crashes are the #1 cause of preventable death for teens. But are teens really as distracted as we think?

A 2019 survey¹ of U.S. high school students found:

• 39% of high school students who drove in the past 30 days texted or emailed while driving on at least one of those days.

• Texting or emailing while driving was more common among older students than younger students and more common among white students (44%) than black students (30%) or Hispanic students (35%).

• Texting or emailing while driving was as common among students whose grades were mostly As or Bs as among students with mostly Cs, Ds or Fs.

• Students who texted or emailed while driving were also more likely to report other transportation risk behaviors. These included being:

• more likely to not always wear a seat belt;

• more likely to ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol; and

• more likely to drive after drinking alcohol.

¹Source

Transportation Risk Behaviors Among High School Students — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2019

Source: Yellman MA, Bryan L, Sauber-Schatz EK, Brener N. Transportation Risk Behaviors Among High School Students — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2019.MMWRSuppl2020;69(Suppl-1):77–83.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su6901a9

A few things you can do as a parent or role model of a teen is:

• Drive the way you want your teen to drive: when you are behind the wheel, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your teen to do. If they catch you doing something wrong – admit to your mistakes. It shows your teen driver that it is never too late to start driving safely and serves as a good learning moment

• Limit your teen to zero or one passenger for at least the first six months that they have a license

• Don’t allow activities that take your teen’s attention away from driving, such as talking on a cell phone, texting, eating, or playing with the radio

• Create a Parent-Teen Driving Agreement that puts your rules in writing to clearly set expectations and limits; here is one example to get you started: P-T Agreement

For more information and helpful resources on teen driving check out the teen section of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) website.