An area high school will benefit from efforts to make teenagers better drivers by participating in a statewide traffic safety program.

Students at 57 Michigan high schools, including Dexter High School, will take part in the Strive for a Safer Drive (S4SD) program. S4SD is a public-private partnership between Ford Driving Skills for Life and the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning. The peer-led traffic safety campaign seeks to reduce traffic crashes, which are the leading cause of death for teens nationwide.

In Michigan, teens and young adults age 15 to 20 years old, accounted for 7.6 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2018, with 55.4 percent of those deaths being the teen driver. In addition, 9,637 teenagers and young adults were injured in motor vehicle crashes in the same year, representing 12.7 percent of all people injured in a crash.

As part of the S4SD program, each school receives $1,000 for students to create a teen-led traffic safety campaign to educate their fellow classmates and the community about various topics including distracted driving, seat belt use, speeding, underage drinking/impaired driving, and winter driving. Schools will submit a video or PowerPoint outlining their campaign. The schools with the top five winning campaigns will be announced in April and will receive a cash prize ranging from $500 to $1,500.

Following their activities, all schools who participated in the S4SD program will have the opportunity to send students to a free hands-on driving clinic with professional driving instructors in the spring.