Motor vehicle crashes remain a leading cause of death and serious injury during adolescence, a developmental period marked by increasing independence, evolving self-regulation, and new exposure to risk. Historically, novice driver crashes were viewed as an inevitable consequence of adolescence, with a limited scientific foundation of adolescent driving safety. In this presentation, Dr. Flaura Winston will describe a 20-year research-to-action-to-impact journey that helped transform teen driver safety into a science of measurable risk, readiness, and prevention. Beginning with the observation that adolescents transition from the lowest lifetime crash risk to the highest at licensure, this work identified the behavioral, developmental, environmental, and family factors that shape risk. Research revealed that many novice drivers are underprepared for predictable high-risk situations, parents play a critical protective role, and driver readiness is measurable and modifiable.

Finally, Dr. Winston will discuss why the skills needed for safe driving will remain fundamental in a rapidly changing transportation environment with new vehicle automation and policy change. Together, these advances demonstrate how rigorous behavioral science can generate actionable evidence and scalable, equitable solutions that help ensure all adolescents can safely access the opportunities that mobility provides.

Dr. Flaura Winston is a pediatrician, engineer, and public health researcher who established the scientific foundation behind new patents, products, programs, policies, and laws for child injury prevention and young driver safety. She serves as the Director of the Innovation Ecosystem at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and founded the Center for Injury Research and Prevention, the first Center of Emphasis at CHOP. She holds the Distinguished Chair of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. For her rigorous yet impactful work, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017. She is a principal investigator of the DRIVER study, a large randomized trial of online and behind-the-wheel driver training to reduce adolescent crash risk (R01HD108249).