Researchers at the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Transportation Center are collaborating to better understand the crash risks for teen drivers in the Commonwealth, with the goal of developing new strategies to improve driving safety.
Working alongside state highway safety partners, the team is examining teen driver crash patterns to support Kentucky's long-term safety goals.
Fatal teen driver crashes are a complex, multi-layered problem, which requires expertise from an interdisciplinary team.
"Rarely does a severe crash result from a single causal factor," said Benjamin Blandford, Ph.D. a senior research scientist at the Kentucky Transportation Center, "Multiple and overlapping factors generally lead to severe crashes."
The UK team is led by Caitlin Northcutt, Ph.D., director of the UK DRIVE Lab, alongside Reginald Souleyrette, Ph.D., past chair of the UK Department of Civil Engineering and Commonwealth Professor of Transportation Engineering, and Blandford, senior research scientist at the Kentucky Transportation Center, a research organization at UK focused on improving transportation safety, efficiency, and sustainability. Rounding out the UK team is Madisyn Slone, an undergraduate psychology student researcher from the UK College of Arts and Sciences. Each researcher brings a distinct perspective and area of specialization, working alongside state professionals to help Kentucky tackle one of its most pressing road safety challenges.
The team is proud to support the Commonwealth of Kentucky in this effort. State professionals and their existing commitment to tackling road safety have made this collaboration possible.
Together, they shared early analyses of Kentucky teen driver crash patterns with the state during the development of the 2025-2029 Kentucky Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). Their descriptive findings helped inform the SHSP's emphasis-area discussions and supported the state's broader understanding of young driver risk. The team also presented new findings on teen driver crash risk to the Governor's Executive Committee on Highway Safety.
Souleyrette said the SHSP helps Kentucky focus its efforts by providing both high‑level and practical planning that identifies and quantifies the highway safety problem and gives clear guidance as to what can be done about it.
This work is part of an ongoing applied research project titled "An Investigation of Teen Driver‑Involved Crashes in Kentucky (2020-2024)," conducted by the UK DRIVE Lab and the Kentucky Transportation Center. The team analyzed five years of Kentucky crash data from the CRASH database to identify patterns and risk factors. These findings are part of the SHSP Implementation FY26 project supported by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
The project began when a report, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) "Traffic Safety Facts: Young Drivers," showed Kentucky had the highest rate of teen drivers involved in fatal crashes in the nation. The number was far above the national average and higher than the surrounding states. According to the report, Kentucky's young driver fatal crash involvement rate was 138.36 in 2023 and 104.15 in 2022, compared to the national average of 42.40 in 2023.
"It didn't make sense that Kentucky would be so much higher than other states," Northcutt said. "We wanted to understand what was happening and how we could help."
The team compared the national findings to Kentucky's own data to determine whether reporting differences were contributing to the elevated numbers. They drew the national figures from NHTSA's young drivers reports, which rely on FARS fatality data combined with state‑reported licensing counts. They analyzed crash records from the Kentucky Collision Reporting and Analysis System for Highways (CRASH) database, focusing on data from 2020 through 2024.
This descriptive analysis is part of an ongoing applied research project conducted by the UK DRIVE Lab and the Kentucky Transportation Center and was presented publicly at the 2026 College of Public Health Showcase. Their analysis showed that while the national report had overestimated Kentucky's fatal crash rate for young drivers, the state's rate remained far higher than the national average.
Blandford said the data makes one thing clear: teen driver crashes rarely come from a single cause. Instead, several risks often stack together: For example, 57% of teen driver crashes involve roadway departure, and many also include aggressive or distracted driving.
"Teen drivers begin learning at a much earlier age now," Ryan Fisher, director of the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety, said. "Our goal is to prevent teen crashes and fatalities, and these findings will help target prevention efforts across the state."
Northcutt, a developmental psychologist and injury prevention researcher with the College of Public Health, explained that teen drivers are still developing the cognitive skills needed for safe driving. This includes attention management, impulse control and decision-making under pressure.
Additionally, their brains are still developing the executive functions needed for safe driving - skills like working memory, inhibition and task switching. These factors highlight why structured practice, supportive guidance and evidence‑based training is so important during the early driving years.
"Even typically developing teens have issues with executive functioning in stressful, high‑demand situations," Northcutt said. "Driving presents a lot of moments where teens must make fast decisions with limited experience to guide them."
In Kentucky, these developmental challenges are intensified by the fact that the state does not require formal driver education. As a result, many teens enter the licensing process with fewer structured opportunities to practice navigating nighttime driving, rural roads, severe weather and high‑speed interstates. Northcutt explained that without consistent, guided exposure to these conditions, teens may encounter them for the first time when they are already driving independently, increasing the likelihood of high-risk situations.
"Teen drivers are at the beginning of their driving journey will be on our roads for many years," Northcutt said. "If we help them build strong skills now, we make the whole system safer for everyone."
Engineering + Public Health = Stronger Safety Layers
Souleyrette, a transportation safety expert with more than 25 years of experience, said teen driver safety has traditionally been approached through the "four E's" of safety: engineering, education, emergency response and enforcement. However, he noted that these strategies alone don't fully address the complex, overlapping factors that contribute to teen crashes.
"We believe we can do much more to save more lives and reduce injuries by engaging with public health," Souleyrette said.
Blandford agreed. "Public health professionals can help us better understand the behavioral components," he said. "Additionally, transportation engineers can help better design the transportation system so that when a teen driver inevitably makes a mistake, the result is less likely to be life‑changing, or worse, life‑ending."
Kentucky's transportation leaders say this work is essential to the state's long-term safety goals.
Deputy State Highway Engineer Jason J. Siwula, PE, emphasized that teen driver safety is ultimately about saving lives.
"Highway safety is about people, and the more we learn and understand, the better we're able to help those people safely reach their destinations," he said.
Siwula added that this research helps the state take into account how inexperienced drivers behave behind the wheel, so transportation organizations can learn how to best help them make safe decisions.
"The partnerships between state agencies and universities are critical," Siwula said. "Innovation is fueled by understanding and ingenuity. These partnerships present opportunities to gain a deeper understanding of critical transportation topics and that understanding leads agencies to be able to address the causes of challenges and more quickly act on opportunities to improve safety."
Students Are Helping Build the Next Layer of Safety
UK psychology student Madisyn Slone has played an important role in analyzing early data and understanding teen driver behavior. She said the project has been a meaningful introduction to applied research, and mentorship from Northcutt helped shape her academic path.
"Collaborating with such an interdisciplinary group of professionals has profoundly shaped my trajectory as a future psychologist," Slone said. "Dr. Northcutt's mentorship has been so important to me by providing me with many opportunities across the intersections of public health and transportation safety. Under her guidance, I have seen firsthand how psychological principles are used to analyze driver behavior and prevent fatalities," she said.
Next Steps for the Research Team
Moving forward, the team plans to deepen its work by strengthening data surveillance and furthering their interdisciplinary approach to understanding teen driver risk. Leveraging expertise in engineering, geography and developmental science, they aim to identify the areas of the state, particularly those with more rural terrain. They will continue examining how post‑COVID licensing changes, advanced driver assistance technologies and Kentucky's upcoming shift to a younger permit age may influence teen crash patterns.
A major focus of the work ahead is isolating the most important predictors of teen crashes - such as hazard perception, distraction and nighttime driving - to guide future interventions.
The team also sees promise in evidence-based training approaches, including behind‑the‑wheel practice, hazard perception training and safe‑driving phone applications that help teens and parents understand risky behaviors. This research is building the evidence base Kentucky needs to tailor its prevention strategies and reduce teen crashes statewide.
This initial work was supported by the Kentucky Transportation Center and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet through OHS 1000200238 (PI: Souleyrette) titled ''SHSP Implementation FY26
