By Shaunavahn Reid, Alani Schwertfeger, Cindy Tint, Yaneli Victoriano, and Nichole Christian
Originally published on Youthcast Media Group®
National road safety advocates are aiming to drive down the number of crashes caused by distracted driving by encouraging passengers – particularly teens– to speak up instead of sitting silent in unsafe conditions.
It’s a new tactic in an ongoing campaign against a national problem. Car crashes remain the leading cause of accidental injury deaths for teens in the U.S., according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Progress is being made – the number of people dying in crashes involving at least one young driver dropped 5% in 2022 to 5,339, according to the National Safety Council – but the death rate remains much higher than for drivers 20 and over.
Safety advocates are looking to events like the now annual National Passenger Safety Week, the last week in January, to help show teens why they may be their own best defense against the dangers of unsafe or distracted driving. The advocates hope raising overall awareness among teens will increase the likelihood more teens will seize the opportunity from the passenger seat to help save lives.
The new focus on passenger empowerment grows out of longstanding evidence showing how simply having a passenger in the car with a teen driver increases the probability of a crash. The risk of death per mile driven doubles with two young passengers and increases when new passengers are added, according to the AAA Foundation.
In a poll conducted by Youthcast Media Group of 134 high school students from across the country, about 77% said that they had been a passenger while the driver texted or checked their phone or social media while driving. Seventy percent said they’d been in a car where other passengers were causing distractions.
If those passengers speak up and help the driver focus, rather than causing distraction, advocacy groups like the National Road Safety Foundation, which co-sponsors the annual passenger safety week, say they’ll keep everyone safer.
Teens, who have already started joining the effort, agree. “Ultimately, the decision is not based upon you,’’ said Sydney Montgomery, a high school student from Georgia who is a member of the peer safety program, Teens in the Driver Seat. “It’s a decision that’s around everyone, because if you do let that situation happen, you’re not only impacting you, but everyone that’s around you. So if you let that go through, you could risk anyone’s life that’s around you.”
National Passenger Safety Week, now in its fourth year, runs from Jan. 20-27 and is part of the National Passenger Safety Campaign, a joint effort of the National Road Safety Foundation and We Save Lives, an Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit focused on changing “dangerous driving choices” and saving lives by “promoting realistic solutions.”
One of the more passionate and vocal advocates of the burgeoning movement is We Save Lives founder Candace Lightner, who also founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a nonprofit widely credited with changing laws against drunk driving and saving hundreds of thousands of lives as a result.
Once again, Lightner wants to help spark change, this time by urging youth and their parents to think more critically about their roles in disrupting unsafe driving. Parents can insist their teens become more aware of the dangers of riding in cars with people, particularly teens who engage in habits such as texting while driving, she says.
Lightner advises that every parent regularly ask themselves some basic questions: With whom is my child riding? Are they a licensed driver? Taking the time to pose tough questions, says the self-described “hellraiser,” can help save lives. “Would you let your kid run around with somebody who carries around an assault rifle?” she asks.
But it’s teens, ultimately, who may have the biggest influence on their peers, whether they are drivers or passengers. And many are taking the responsibility seriously: among teens polled in the YMG survey, 77% said they felt empowered to speak up when they felt unsafe, with more than half agreeing that “it’s really important and I’d do it without hesitation.”
It’s something that Natalie Delmont, a student at New Foundations Charter School in Philadelphia said has “actually happened a lot to me when I’ve been in the car.’’ She’s been riding with friends who she described as “distracted, listening to music and all. There’s a bunch of times where I stopped [a friend] from getting into a car accident because she wasn’t paying attention at all.’’
At the same time, though, more than a quarter of teens said they wouldn’t know what to say. And of the teens who said they did not feel empowered speaking up, many said it was because they were afraid of appearing lame, like a “passenger driver” or disrespectful to the person driving, especially if they were not a licensed driver themselves.
“I don’t have my permit. I don’t have my license. Who am I to be talking about the way they’re driving,” said Natalie Spina, a junior at Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. “It makes me feel like I don’t really have a voice on these issues.”
Sixty-four percent of students said they don’t believe enough emphasis is placed on the responsibility of passengers to speak up in unsafe situations.
Greater education about passenger empowerment could help ease some of the nervousness that some teens reported feeling about confronting distracted drivers, they said in the survey. That’s reflected in the attitudes of teens like Sydney Montgomery and her high school classmate Olivia Coiner who’ve become involved in awareness efforts such as Teens in the Driver Seat, which is an initiative of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
“If you feel uncomfortable and you see something wrong, you need to say something, because it’s way less of a big deal for you to call your mom and tell your mom, ‘Hey, can you come pick me up?’ than it would be to call your mom and say, ‘Hey, I got in a car accident. I need you to come pick me up from the hospital,’” Olivia said.
And the responsibility to speak up about safety isn’t just with peers– it can be with parents and other adult drivers, too, Olivia added.
“My dad, he works as a sales rep, so he’s constantly on the phone,” she says. “Sometimes I have to tell him, ‘you can do this later… you don’t need to do it while you’re driving.’”
Vanity Laracuente, a student at Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, has done the same with a friend’s father, even though it made her uneasy. “ I have to tell him to stop looking on his phone while driving because ‘you’re gonna end up crashing,’” she said she’s told him.
Much like Lightner and others, Vanity believes advocating for greater safety is a risk worth taking even if it’s not always an easy choice in the moment. “Though it may be intimidating,’’ she said, “it is always better to do so, than not doing so because, at the end of the day, your life’s on the line.’’
Shaunavahn Reid is a senior at Weaver High School in Hartford, Conn., Alani Schwertfeger is a 10th grade student at Nazareth Academy in Chicago, Cindy Tint is a 10th grader at Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas, and Yaneli Victoriano is a junior at Palatine High School in Palatine, Ill. They worked with Youthcast Media Group journalist-mentor Nichole Christian to write this story during a news writing workshop. Student journalists Chelsea Spilleth and Alanna Nicholson contributed to this story.
