By Mike Kruzman / news@whmi.com


A student-led program to help teach teenagers safe driving habits is being undertaken by a pair of area high schools.

The Strive for a Safer Drive Program is a peer-led traffic safety campaign that aims to reduce the leading cause of death for teens, which is traffic crashes. Thirty-eight schools will be participating in the program this year, including Dexter High School and Holly High School.

As part of the program, each school will receive $1,000 which students will then use to create their own campaign that will educate classmates and the community about various traffic safety topics including speeding; seat belts; pedestrian, bicyclist and passenger safety; and impaired distracted, nighttime, and winter driving. Schools will submit videos or a PowerPoint presentation outlining their campaign, with five being selected to win cash prizes between $500 and $1,500.

The program is in its 11th year and comes from a public-private partnership between Ford Motor Company Fund’s Driving Skills for Life program and the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning.

The OHSP reports that in 2020, teenage drivers represented 6.7-percent of all drivers on the road, but accounted for 7.3-percent of traffic deaths in Michigan.

Fifty-two-percent of those deaths were the driver. For more information on the campaign, visit www.Michigan.gov/S4SD