NJ Teen driver deaths down 36%; Across U.S. Teen Driver Deaths Up 10%

NJM Insurance, one of the state’s largest auto insurers, is being recognized for its efforts in helping to improve teen driver safety.

The National Safety Council presented the Ewing-based company with the 2016 Teen Driver Safety Leadership Award this month.

The award is given to individuals and organizations that work to improve teen driver safety and save lives through community outreach and innovative educational programming.

NJM was nominated by the parents of Ryan Fitzpatrick, an 18-year-old who was killed in April 2009 when he lost control of his SUV less than a mile from his Medford home. He was one of six students from the district who had been killed behind the wheel between 2007 and 2010 and his death spurred his parents to research tools that would improve the driver education curriculum.

The Fitzpatricks launched a fundraising campaign to buy driving simulators and NJM, the family’s insurer, donated the first one. Since then, the company has donated 67 to high schools across the state.

In NJ, Teen driver fatalities are down 36% While Across U.S. Teen Driver Deaths Up 10% from 2014-2015, a report from the Governor’s Highway Safety Association shows. This is not because of legislation alone, rather the result of education and peer-to-peer programs of safety awareness among teens and teen community buy-in, say NJM officials who work on the company’s safety education programs and community outreach school initiatives.

“We are doing better as a state … and I want to believe as a company we have done everything we can to contribute to the safety gains we are seeing,” said Violet Marrero, NJM’s consumer safety administrator. Two retired law enforcement officers teach the NJM program.

Teens have the lowest seatbelt usage rate of any group of drivers. While a majority of adult drivers now wear a seatbelt in the U.S. – in N.J. more than 90% of adults wore a seatbelt in 2013, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Today, fifty-six percent (56%) of teens killed in crashes weren’t wearing a seatbelts and a majority 51% of teen passengers were not wearing seat belts as passengers to teen drivers, according to NJM. “We see peer influence in the lack of seat belts being used by teenagers,” says Marrero, herself a mother who raised three teenage drivers, now healthy adults.

Boys and men are less likely to wear seat belts than women and girls. Seat belt usage in the U.S. was lower among adults in the 1950s and 1960s when seat belts were optional, and even in the 1980s in many states only about 10% of folks wore seat belts, before national and local programs of safety marketing, advertising, community outreach and education.

Cell phones, seat belts and not having too many friends or passengers in a teenagers car are small changes in behavior that can save lives and prevent the more than 400,000 traumatic and life-altering injuries to teens who drive in the U.S., says NJM and Marrero.

In 2013, NJM launched its Teen Driver Safety Program to celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary.

The company credits the program with helping to reduce teen driving deaths and injuries.

It covers topics such as the rules of the road and distracted, impaired and fatigued driving.

“It’s ensuring they understand that inattention is not just texting or talking on the phone, but it’s changing the radio or talking with friends, forgetting or really choosing not to put on your seat belt” Marrero said. “Distraction is worse than ever. We see kids updating their social media statuses –while driving. Or also popular is taking videos of oneself – a driver taking a cell phone video of him or herself while driving. Eating. Putting on lip-gloss. Driving Sober. We continue to see also drunk, or what we more comprehensively refer to as drugged driving.”

To date, the program has made the rounds in nearly 200 schools, reaching 70,000 students.

“What we’re trying to do is develop a culture of safety very much like we do with our commercial policyholders,” public affairs director John Hardiman said, adding that NJM’s commitment to safety dates to its founding.

He says the “distinguished” award is an affirmation that their efforts are making a difference.

“The reason they selected us isn’t just because we’re in the schools, it isn’t just because we’re creating awareness around safety,” Hardiman said.

“This is my driver’s ed class,” said Adaeli Yan, age 15, a Guatemalan, U.S. Citizen who lives in Bordentown and attends Bordentown High, And attended the NJM program during an unusually warm fall Friday – during the very last period of the day, on a Friday before Friday’s school day became the weekend. She put her pink metallic cell phone away to listen to the presentation. “It reminds you to put the cell phone away.”