As National Teen Driver Safety Week begins Sunday, Oct. 18, and runs through Oct. 24, two of the country’s best-known road safety nonprofits are pressing the same point. Crashes remain the leading cause of preventable death for American teenagers, and the adults in the passenger seat, and in the driveway, have more influence over how young people drive than many of them may realize.
The National Road Safety Foundation and the National Safety Council each issued announcements on Oct. 15, the latter marking the 20th annual observance. Both organizations pair new statistics with free resources for families, schools and communities. Taken together with federal crash data and research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, they offer a detailed picture of where teen driving risk concentrates and what tools exist to reduce it.
The Numbers Behind the Week
The National Road Safety Foundation, citing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, reports that 2,162 teen drivers died in traffic crashes in 2024 and that an estimated 184,129 teens were injured. The National Safety Council counts differently, tallying 5,247 deaths in 2024 in crashes involving drivers ages 15 to 20, a 6.5 percent decrease from the year before. That figure includes passengers and other road users, not only the young drivers themselves.
The figures are not directly interchangeable, because the age bands, the years and the definitions of who is counted differ. NHTSA’s own most recent published breakdown for teen drivers ages 15 to 18 covers 2023. That year, 2,611 people died in crashes involving a teen driver, and 822 of them were the teen drivers. Another 604 were passengers in a teen’s vehicle, and 377 of those passengers, or 62 percent, were teens themselves. The agency also recorded 87,074 injured teen drivers in the same year.
Five Conversations Worth Having
The National Road Safety Foundation organizes its guidance around five risk areas, each backed by crash statistics. On impaired driving, the group notes that 19 percent of teen passenger vehicle drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2023 had alcohol in their systems, and it cautions that marijuana, many prescription drugs and some over-the-counter medications can also impair a driver.
On seat belts, the foundation reports that 51 percent of teen drivers who die in crashes were unbuckled. On distraction, it cites research finding that dialing a phone number while driving raises a teen’s crash risk six times and texting raises it 23 times, and it points out that passengers, audio and climate controls, and eating or drinking can also pull a young driver’s attention away from the road.
Speed was a factor for 32 percent of teen drivers in fatal crashes, according to the foundation, which adds that males were more likely than females to be involved in fatal speeding-related crashes. Passengers round out the list: research cited by the group shows that fatal crash risk rises with each additional person in the vehicle, and that the likelihood of a teen driver engaging in risky behavior triples when multiple passengers are aboard.
The same five themes anchor NHTSA’s “5 to Drive” campaign, which asks teens to avoid drinking and driving, buckle up on every trip in the front and back seats, put the phone down, stop speeding, and carry no more than one passenger at a time.
Parents as the Example
Both organizations place unusual weight on what parents do, not only on what they say. Surveys show that teens whose parents hold discussions about safe driving and set firm rules typically take fewer risks behind the wheel and are involved in fewer crashes, according to the National Road Safety Foundation. Michelle Anderson, the foundation’s director of operations, said parents often complain that teens do not listen, yet studies show teens are watching. She urged parents to model safe driving long before a learner’s permit enters the picture, and encouraged teens and all family members to speak up when a driver is behaving unsafely.
Debra Sanchez, executive vice president of Safety Impact and External Affairs at the National Safety Council, struck a similar note, describing licensing as an exciting milestone but one that requires more than passing a test. She called on parents and caregivers to set clear expectations, model safe behavior and keep the conversation going after the license arrives.
A 2025 survey commissioned by the council suggests there is room to grow. Of the parents surveyed, 82 percent said they feel confident in teaching their teen to drive safely, yet only 55 percent considered themselves knowledgeable about best practices.
Free Tools for Families and Communities
The National Safety Council’s DriveitHOME program, run in partnership with General Motors, offers its resources free in English and Spanish. They include virtual parent training that covers key safety topics and local graduated driver licensing requirements, weekly lessons called Pointers for Parents, and The New Driver Deal, a customizable parent-teen agreement that addresses curfews, passenger limits and vehicle responsibilities. A free DriveitHOME app, available on the App Store and Google Play, lets families track practice hours and access the program’s lessons. Schools, workplaces and community groups can draw on videos, posters and infographics through the program’s community resources, with details at nsc.org/NTDSW.
The National Road Safety Foundation, a nonprofit that has worked on highway safety for more than 60 years, offers conversation guides in its Passport to Safe Driving, free at nrsf.org/passport-safe-driving. NHTSA’s traffic safety marketing site also hosts teen driver communication materials, including sample news releases, many in versions aimed separately at teens and at parents.
What the Car Itself Can Do
Automakers have built parental controls into vehicles for years. Ford’s MyKey and General Motors’ Teen Driver are in-vehicle suites that include features such as parent-set speed limits and interlocks that activate when front-seat occupants are not buckled. GM has described Teen Driver as a coaching tool: it requires a parent-created PIN, activates when the car is started with a registered teen key, and generates a report card of driving habits that parents can review on the infotainment screen. Smartphone apps from companies including Hyundai, Verizon and Grom Social offer overlapping functions, such as speed alerts, curfew notifications and crash detection.
An IIHS analysis of U.S. crashes from 2016 through 2019 estimated the potential payoff. Assuming the technologies were universally used and completely effective, teen-specific tools combined with crash avoidance systems such as automatic emergency braking, lane departure prevention and blind spot monitoring could prevent or mitigate 41 percent of all crashes involving teen drivers, as much as 47 percent of teen driver injuries and as much as 78 percent of teen driver deaths. The institute found that speeding contributed to almost 40 percent of teen driver deaths.
Awareness is a hurdle. A separate IIHS study of parents who owned MyKey-equipped Ford vehicles found that only a little over half knew the feature was available to them.
The Week Ahead
Events are expected in schools and communities across the country during the week of Oct. 18 to 24, with NHTSA, the National Safety Council and the National Road Safety Foundation each distributing materials. The National Road Safety Foundation describes its mission as reducing crashes, deaths and injuries through greater public awareness of safe driving habits, a goal shared by the council, which has pursued workplace and roadway safety for more than 110 years.