Crossroads High School Conducts Teen Safe Driving Event | Community Spirit

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Thanks to the Allstate Foundation, Students Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE), Inc. presented a grant to Crossroads High School to increase youth safety and promote teen safe driving. 

The Crossroads High School SAVE Chapter, advised by Lindsey Schab, has been busy promoting SAVE awareness in their school and community.  Utilizing Allstate Teen Safe Driving materials and SAVE materials, they are educating and empowering teens with Teen Safe Driving skills and youth violence prevention strategies.  The chapter held a Teen Safe Driving event yesterday, Thursday, March 17th.  The event featured local Allstate Agent Mark Noffsinger, Officer Jeff Augustyn with the Kentwood Police Department, and Deputy Tom McCutcheon with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department.

With support from Allstate agents and employee volunteers, SAVE chapters are providing leadership in their schools and communities to ensure that all students will be encouraged and empowered with healthy life skills while engaging in educational activities and opportunities to promote teen safe driving and youth safety.

SAVE is a peer-to-peer organization that focuses on the power of positive peer influences.  According to a recent Allstate Foundation survey, Shifting Teen Attitudes: The State of Teen Driving 2009, peers are a major influence on teens – both positive and negative.  Some of the concerning statistics that SAVE chapters are addressing include:

• Eighty-two percent of teens reported using cell phones while driving.
• Nearly half (48 percent) of girls admit they are likely to speed more than 10 mph over the limit, versus 36 percent of boys.
• Seventy-seven percent of teens admit they have felt unsafe with another teen's driving.

“This generous grant from The Allstate Foundation will assist students in finding real solutions to the issues of teen safe driving that they face each day,” stated SAVE’s executive director, Carleen Wray. 

“By empowering teens to become smart driving activists in their schools and communities, we hope to reverse the staggering statistics,” said Allstate vice president Thomas Clarkson. “Through The Allstate Foundation, we seek to develop innovative, teen-focused approaches to raise awareness of the issue and, ultimately, to help save lives and reduce injuries.”