Students at Franklin High School in Elk Grove have been selected to be among the first in California to pilot a new peer influence program designed to combat the number-one killer of teens today – car crashes.

Student leaders at Franklin High School will introduce the Teens in the Driver Seat program, as well as their plans for their program at their school site, at a press conference at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, September 19 at Franklin. 

Teens in the Driver Seat is the nation’s first peer-to-peer program focused exclusively on driving safety. The program was developed by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), and is available to California high schools at no cost through funding provided by the California Office of Traffic Safety and State Farm.

Teen drivers across the state were responsible for 1,744 fatal crashes between 2006 and 2010, with 83 of those happening in Sacramento County. Injury crashes statewide during the same time period totaled 131,502, with 6,654 of them in Sacramento County.

Statewide studies funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety and University of California, Berkeley showed that the percentage of young drivers talking or texting on cell phones behind the wheel had more than doubled from last year to the current year – rising from 5.3 percent to 11.4 percent.

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