Sixty-seven deaths per week, nine per day, one every two hours: Motor-vehicle crashes are the number one killer of teenagers in the United States, and although fatalities have declined in recent years, almost 3,500 teenagers still die every year in motor vehicle crashes (NHTSA 2011). In fact, 35% of all deaths among 16- to 19-year-olds are…

What if you could challenge your 12th graders to understand car crashes in the context of physical forces, manufacturing challenges, government safety standards, and individual rights? With this volume in the "STEM Road Map Curriculum Series," you can! "Car Crashes" outlines a journey that will steer your students toward…

The majority of deaths for contemporary young people are related to injuries sustained in motor vehicle accidents. Most prevention efforts targeted at addressing the issue are less than effective and do not address youth driving as a culture. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study that attempts to understand the ways in which…

A substantial proportion of high school students consume alcohol, with nearly a quarter of 12th grade students reporting binge drinking in the past two weeks. Drinking alcohol in adolescence is associated with a variety of other risky behaviors, as well as with an increased likelihood of long-term problems reaching into adulthood. This "Adolescent…

In popular and policy framings in the USA, traffic accidents and fatalities involving teens are typically treated as having their own facticity. Much like other social phenomenon, teen driving accidents are regarded as though they are part of an objective reality external to a set of ideational or discursive processes and social organization of…

The Department of Commerce in its highway safety conference made this pronouncement: "The problem of safety is closely linked with health, thrift, and many other elements which taken together make up the great problem of developing a finer citizenship. Educational leaders of the country are now endeavoring to weld together the essential elements…