How teens can be safer drivers

This story was reported by Youthcast Media Group, which trains high school students from under-resourced communities to report, write and broadcast stories that highlight solutions to the health, wealth and social disparities where they live. Route Fifty will from time to time feature these unique voices and perspectives as they deal with the challenges in front of many state and local governments.

Holly Christiansen sat alone in her driving instructor’s car, hoping a police officer wouldn't appear. Her instructor had left her there, in the driver’s seat, to run into the mall for a “quick” bathroom break, despite her not yet having her license.

This was one of many incidents that Christiansen said left her feeling uncertain, sometimes afraid and ultimately unprepared by her driving instruction experience. Christiansen said her instructor was often distracted, or distracting. He repeatedly spit out the window while she was driving, asked her to make a phone call for him while he was behind the wheel, and finally, left her alone in the car without a license in this mall parking lot for more than 15 minutes.

Christiansen, then 16 years old, was doing her six hours of instruction required by New Jersey state law to obtain her learner’s permit. To meet those hours, she took paid lessons with a licensed driving instructor. New Jersey schools do not offer in-car instruction as part of driver’s education, so certified instructors like Christiansen’s are often tapped to fill the gap. But, not all instructors—or instruction—are created equal.

“I felt unsafe,” said Christiansen. “He did not seem like a trustworthy person.... The hours I did just were not very helpful.”

Deficient driving instruction is just one of the many potential challenges facing new young drivers when they hit the road. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration includes inexperience, immaturity and greater susceptibility to distractions as contributing factors to teens’ higher death rate, which tops that of any age group other than those 80 and older. And it’s getting worse. Fatal crashes involving drivers 15 to 20 years old increased 11% from 4,430 in 2020 to 4,923 in 2021.

According to a survey conducted by insurance research and comparison site The Zebra in 2023, 40% of teens think driving is scary.

Christiansen said the most dangerous thing she experienced as a new driver was not understanding the right of way and nearly getting into a collision.

Integrating youth into the norms and culture of the road is a crucial part of making them safer drivers, said Rick Birt, director of the Washington D.C. Highway Safety Office. A general lack of awareness of how the overall system works is one of the biggest challenges facing teens, he said.

“The culture of safety only works if we all abide by the same rules,” Birt said. “A four-way stop sign only works because all four drivers are going to understand the order in which they go. If everybody just goes at once, guess what? We have a crash.”

Zain Ahmad, an 18-year-old resident of Middle River, Maryland, said the most dangerous thing he did as a new driver was fail to look for cars coming from both directions when entering an intersection. Ahmad, who had only been driving for a few weeks at the time of his interview, said teens need more training and in-car instruction. Maryland requires new drivers of any age to complete a 30-hour driver's education course and six hours of behind-the-wheel training.

“Not having that much experience on the road impacts a lot of drivers,” he said. “They should definitely make more requirements [for in car-training].”

To make teen drivers safer, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have implemented a three-stage graduated driver licensing system, which means drivers must gain a predetermined amount of driving experience before restrictions on their license are removed. This has reduced crash risks for new drivers by up to 50%. Birt, who was also previously president and CEO of Students Against Destructive Decisions, formerly Students Against Driving Drunk, said increasing the amount of instructional driving hours required overall could build on those improvements.

Birt contrasts the 40-60 hours of driving experience required in most states with the hundreds of hours manicurists or massage therapists must complete in many states to be licensed.

“We then say it's OK and it's enough that a young person has 40 to 60 hours of driving?” Birt said.

“I mean masseuses and manicurists don't have the power to kill someone,” said Anika Hadap, a 17-year-old from Princeton, New Jersey, where new drivers are required to enroll in a licensed driving school. At the time of her interview, she had been driving for eight months.

Youthcast Media Group student journalists conducted a survey of 25 of their peers, between 16 and 19 years old, about teen driver safety, including their experiences as drivers and passengers, and things that affected how safe they felt.

While most respondents said they felt their classroom drivers’ ed training was helpful, those who also completed driving hours or additional behind-the-wheel training to get their license said it made a huge difference in their confidence and in making the lessons stick.

“I think that there should be some sort of requirement that requires learners to have a set number of hours taught by a professional instructor,” said Joey Chan, a 19-year-old student in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her state mandates that applicants under the age of 18 complete a state-approved driver's education course to receive a license. 

At the time of her interview, Chan had been driving for about a year and had received private instruction. She described feeling lucky that the extra education was available to her, especially as private instruction like hers is not accessible to all teens. “It was quite costly,” she said, “so I don't think it's quite accessible for everyone if they want to also take lessons.”

In the survey, respondents also ranked how effective they felt five messaging techniques would be in changing their behavior: a commercial, a parent/mentor conversation, a peer-to-peer conversation, being in an accident and a driving safety class. Twelve out of the 25 respondents chose “being in an accident” as the thing most likely to change their behavior.

“I feel like there's only so much you can tell people,” said Hadap of Princeton. “The people who are going to be overconfident are always going to be overconfident until they have a close call.”

Taking steps to reduce the danger of such real-life lessons appeals to both teens and experts like Birt, who says youth can be an important part of a safe driving solution. In Ohio, Birt worked on a coalition that included young people who helped get a distracted driving bill passed in 2023.

“They were the ones who were sick and tired of their friends having phones in their hands, they were the ones that were tired of their parents being distracted behind the wheel,” Birt said. “And so you have a really cool and effective opportunity to engage ... that can have a really big impact as well.”

Regulatory and legislative bodies exclude teens from conversations about what would make them safer drivers at their peril, Birt said.

“If we aren't intentional in bringing folks in, we will probably unintentionally leave them out,” he said.

About half of the respondents in the survey said that they spoke up when a peer was driving in a way that made them feel unsafe. The teens interviewed for this story seemed ready to use their voices, and they largely agreed that requiring and providing access to more quality instruction behind the wheel was a good place to start.

“The more requirements, the better new drivers will perform,” said Ahmad of Maryland. “You know, there's no such thing as too much training.”

Jessica Chen is a senior at Princeton High School in Princeton, New Jersey, Winnie Chan is a sophomore at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C., and Daniel Oloju is a senior at Kenwood High School in Essex, Maryland. They were participants in a Youthcast Media Group reporting workshop on transportation and worked with YMG mentor-editor and former USA TODAY multimedia reporter Hannah Gaber. YMG is a nonprofit organization that teaches high school students across the country to report on health and social issues that impact communities of color and the solutions to these issues.