Keep the Drive and Allstate Foundation Empower Teens to Take on

Car crashes are the No. 1 killer of teens in America today, resulting in nearly 6,000 deaths and 300,000 injuries each year.

Keep the Drive, a national teen-to-teen smart driving movement sponsored by The Allstate Foundation, announced today a new public service (PSA) campaign to help combat the crisis and empower teens to speak up when they feel their safety is threatened in a car.

Despite safer cars, better roads and decades of safe-driving programs, the tragic rate of teen driving fatalities has not changed significantly in over a decade.

The crash rate per mile driven for 16- to 19-year-olds is four times that of older drivers.
In 2006, 62 percent of teenage passenger deaths occurred in vehicles driven by another teenager.
75 percent of teen crash deaths are due to speeding and driver error.
Adding just one passenger to a teen driver's car doubles the risk of a crash, and that risk increases proportionally with the number of teenage passengers.
In 2005, an Allstate Foundation survey of teens found that peer-to-peer outreach is essential in safe driving programs. Traditionally these programs have been limited to adults "talking at" teens, however more than half of the teens said their friends would be the most effective in getting them to drive safely.

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