Driver’s Education Accessibility and Instructor Certification Challenges – Disparities in the State

Young drivers are routinely overrepresented in traffic fatality data. For example, in 2023, young drivers made up 5.1 percent of all licensed drivers but accounted for 8.9 percent of drivers in fatal traffic crashes (USDOT National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2025). In recognizing this challenge and in an effort to reach Vision Zero, the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) has a goal to reduce young driver fatalities by “attain[ing] a five-year average rate of young driver involved fatality crashes of 29.5 by December 31, 2026” (Montana Department of Transportation, n.d.). As an action item to help meet this goal, the MDT Highway Traffic Safety Section has been working with the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) to improve access for Tribal teens to driver’s education. However, in doing so, it was identified that not only do most Tribal communities not have driver’s education or certified instructors, but there are disparities across the entire statewide system. This is due to individual school districts determining how to implement driver’s education in their community, which impacts teens access to this training. Therefore, this project is needed to identify the state of practice of driver’s education for each school district across the state and to identify needs (e.g., access for at-risk youth) and barriers (e.g., recruitment of driver’s education instructors). This will allow MDT and OPI to create a process for prioritizing which school districts to assist in any given year.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Proposed
• Sponsor Organizations:

  Montana Department of Transportation

  2701 Prospect Avenue
  P.O. Box 201001
  Helena, MT  United States  59620-1001
• Project Managers:

  Nelson, Alexandra

• Start Date: 20251201
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Driver education; Fatalities; Native Americans; Teenage drivers; Traffic safety
• Geographic Terms: Montana
• Subject Areas: Education and Training; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01970349
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Montana Department of Transportation
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Nov 3 2025 3:52PM