I’m a geek about a lot of things. And while I never really got into SciFi movies, I watch them for one key, climactic part: the scenes when some technical thing has gone wrong (i.e. the thermal-coupler is loose) and then after a daring escape or detailed montage the main character starts up the engines and exclaims in triumph, “It’s working! It’s working!”

Well, after I read through some news articles about states recently reporting a decline in teen driver fatalities, I wanted to shout out to the office at large, “It’s working! Our teen driver safety efforts are working!”

All of our efforts here at Teens Drive Smart and other programs nationwide seem to, for the moment, be having a lasting effect on teen drivers!

The North Carolina Highway Patrol reported on July 26 that it has “investigated the deaths of 28 teen drivers so far this year. That compares with 47 such fatalities through the same period in 2009.”

In Colorado, teen-driving deaths decreased by 44 percent, and in Connecticut, “crashes in which 16- and 17-year-old drivers were found to be at fault, dropped by 16.6 percent for 2008, fatalities were down by 20 percent, and injuries dropped by 21 percent.”

All of these stories echo other reports that I have heard, and I think they are SO fantastic, but I don’t think we should allow ourselves to become complacent. While the numbers appear to be dropping they are still way too high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in 2008, about 3,500 teens in the United States aged 15–19 were killed and more than 350,000 were treated in emergency rooms for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes.

Constant vigilance, my friends!

I know we’ve come so far, but we still have a long way to go! Keep up those great school awareness campaigns, stick to the laws of your Graduated Driver’s License (GDL), don’t text and drive, and don’t forget about all the great resources we have for you here at Teens Drive Smart.com!