Although 97% of all bills put in front of Congress fail, the bill that we advocated for passed. In July, President Obama signed the 2012 Transportation bill into law - THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE TEEN SAFE-DRIVING LAW IN HISTORY. Previously, Congress was immune to the tragedy of teen driving deaths, but our campaign changed that with a dramatic increase in phone calls from legislators inquiring about the bill and 25,000 emails sent to Congress in the period leading up to the vote from the Facebook community.

Rather than focusing on the thousands of faceless teenagers who were dying every year, we made the issue more relevant by making it personal; we focused on the 11 teens that were dying every day in car crashes. We named our movement Save11 and built a Facebook community where our community could grieve, share stories and email their Congress people about passing the legislation. At the same time, we developed an aggressive, integrated ad campaign aimed right at the hearts and minds of Congress. Digital, print and a hand-delivered booklet to all of Congress made our message unavoidable. A 36-page insert that doubled the size of a prominent government publication with a letter from Allstate’s CEO, statistics from states with teen driving laws and ads from Allstate’s efforts to date, made officials take notice. It focused on the tragedy - the 11 teens that died every day in America.

Car crashes kill more teens than anything else in America. 4,000 teens die on the road every year. Allstate, the #2 auto insurer in America, couldn’t live with this deadly fact. Through research, we learned that some states have their own laws that require teens to gradually increase driving privileges over time. These laws can reduce driving deaths by up to 40%. If we could pass a NATIONAL teen driving law that uses these graduated driving principles, we could save thousands of teen lives per year. We set out to get this life-saving legislation passed.