D’Nise Williams is the program coordinator for the Eastern Carolina Injury Prevention Program’s (ECIPP) Teen Safe Driving Program. This year marks the 12th year in a row her team has received grant funding from the Governor’s Highway Safety Program (GHSP). The ECIPP is a community collaboration between ECU Health, Maynard Children’s Hospital, the ECU Health Trauma Center and the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. Its goal is to improve the health of eastern North Carolina residents by reducing the incidence and impact of injuries, and it accomplishes this goal through programs like the Teen Safe Driving Program.
The Governor’s Highway Safety Program is the State Highway Safety Office for North Carolina, and it is dedicated to reducing the number of traffic injuries and fatalities in the state. It promotes highway safety through a number of grants and safe driving initiatives like Click It or Ticket and Speed a Little, Lose a Lot. Many of the grants address behavioral approaches to traffic safety, and the grant the ECIPP received focuses on vulnerable road users—in this case, teenage drivers.
The program’s grant runs for a one-year cycle, and each year, educational efforts focus on two counties, which are selected through examination of county crash rate data. “We look at which counties would benefit from interventions to reduce crash rates, even by a small percentage,” Williams said. With the help of the GHSP grant funding, the Teen Safe Driving Program has been able to expand its services from Pitt County to Beaufort, Lenoir, Martin, Craven, Wayne, Nash, Greene, Duplin and Halifax counties, with hopes to further expand into Onslow County this year. “GHSP has been funding this project for more than a decade,” said Jennifer Delcourt, the vulnerable road users coordinator with the Governor’s Highway Safety Program. “This speaks to the impact of the project and the success of staff in reaching teens and parents with important traffic safety information in eastern North Carolina.”
According to data collected between 2016 and 2021, speeding, lane departure and distracted driving were the top factors in car crashes. To combat this, the program focuses on “5 to Drive rules for new drivers,” as developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which include no drinking and driving, buckling up, no use of phones while driving, no speeding and no more than one passenger at a time.
The Teen Safe Driving Program partners with high schools, as well as driver’s education programs, within the identified counties, to promote these safe driving practices for teenagers. “We do lunchtime education tables, partner with health science or P.E. classes, provide parent education curriculum and partner to bring the Cinema Drive interactive 3D movie experience to schools, which is an interactive driving experience that follows someone who has been drinking and driving. We have goggles and an interactive steering wheel, and you can pick out distractions as you drive with and without the goggles,” Williams explained. “The goal is to raise awareness that as a driver, you’re wielding tons of metal on the road, and you need to be your best self mentally.”
The program also provides targeted campaigns for teen drivers, including social media ads, billboards movie theater ads, mall campaigns and gas station TV ads. None of this would be possible without the funding from GHSP.
In 2023, the program achieved just over two million views in their mall campaign, 617 students in driver’s education classes, 7,168 students in lunchtime table education and 6,822 impressions via social media messages. These efforts have yielded positive results for the program. Teens are given pre- and post-intervention surveys to gauge their responses to the education, and there are also pre- and post-driver observations at the conclusion of driver’s education classes. “We usually see a change in behaviors, although it varies by county,” Williams said. “Last year we marked a 6% decrease in distracted driving in Pitt and Duplin counties, but the year before we recorded a 15-20% decrease in our counties of focus.”
Williams said that while it can be challenging to initially establish relationships with schools, once the partnership is established, the Teen Safe Driving Program is invited back year after year. Her goal is to continue to offer school interventions that result in safer driving behaviors, but she also has new ideas. “I want to work on targeted interventions for neurodivergent teens, like teenagers with ADHD or autism. We have so many teens who have trouble focusing already, and a teenager’s frontal lobe, which is responsible for making good decisions, isn’t fully developed,” Williams said. She also wants to establish a partnership with teenagers to create an advisory board for the program. “I’d like to think I’m ‘hip,’” Williams laughed. “But I would love to consult with other teenagers to get their input on what messaging reaches their age group.” Sue Anne Pilgreen, the executive director for the Safe Communities Coalition, the manager of the Pediatric Asthma Program and the manager of the ECIPP, echoed this sentiment. “Teens today aren’t the same as they were 12 years ago, and as they have changed, so has our program. We continue to focus on the historical distractions such as underage drinking and texting while driving, but we now know that mental well-being and substances such as marijuana can also impact teen driving.” Williams said consulting teens about what resonates most with them will help her find innovative and creative ways to reach and engage a teen audience.
Pilgreen championed Williams’s efforts to reach teen audiences across eastern North Carolina. “We are so fortunate to have D’Nise’s mental health background and expertise to better inform the education that we are offering, and to ensure that we are connecting with teens on a ‘real life’ level. My perception of a teens experience isn’t necessarily reality, and D’Nise knows that hers isn’t either. D’Nise is very intentional in bringing youth voices to her work, and structuring her programming and activities in a way that best impacts them.”
Williams emphasized that while the program’s focus on safe teen driving centers on a few counties each year, she is always available to speak to groups and do targeted programming and interventions. “I never turn down the opportunity to encourage kids to be safer,” she said.