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Safety First
Trends in Teen Driving By Kelly Burgess
An anonymous teenager sparked the idea for S2W. Backstrom was on her way to dinner with friends two years ago when she saw a young woman driving along, breezily talking on the phone, with decals and interior d袯r that indisputably identified her as a young, single female. Backstrom couldn't help but wonder if the girl understood how vulnerable she was at that moment. "I thought to myself: Here she has the keys to her independence, but does she know that in the last 10 years crash rates for young women are up 42 percent," says Backstrom. "Does she understand how unsafe her lack of attention to her driving is? Does she realize how vulnerable she is if something happens and she has to pull over?"
Backstrom did some research and discovered some disturbing trends. One she thinks many young people aren't aware of is that, although young women are involved in crashes less frequently than young males, they are 31 percent more likely to be killed. They also sustain more, and more serious, injuries. "There's sort of a societal acceptance that young women are going to be safe," says Backstrom. "What we are starting to look at is how young women are evaluating risky behavior such as eating and talking to friends in the car or on their cell phones. Their distractions tend to be different. We need to make sure we get messages to them that help them realize their vulnerability."
This includes a facet of vulnerability that young men often don't even have to think about: assault. S2W teaches safety in situations such as when a car has a mechanical failure, including how to safely pull over and change a tire, and how to safely summon or wait for help.
And while every tip on S2W's Web site can apply to women or men, Backstrom is targeting women for the same reason that the old proverb notes: If you teach a man to read you've educated an individual; if you teach a woman to read you've educated a family. "Women are messengers of change," says Backstrom. "We're more likely to see safety improvement numbers across the population simply by targeting women."
