Tech’s iCube partners with Tennessee Highway Safety Office on “Reduce TN Crashes”
From left: Stephanie Scarborough, program manager for iCube, and Beth Vernon, program
manager for the Tennessee Highway Safety Office, speak on behalf of Reduce TN Crashes
at a Tennessee Teen Institute event.
More than 1,300 drivers and passengers across Tennessee were victims of fatal traffic
accidents in 2023, according to state records, and drivers ages 16 to 25 were most likely to be involved in a crash.
iCube, an arm of Tennessee Tech University’s College of Business dedicated to bringing
creative solutions to traditional problems, is leading a statewide campaign with the
Tennessee Highway Safety Office (THSO) to change those troubling statistics.
Now in its eleventh year, “Reduce TN Crashes” was the brainchild of iCube Executive
Director Kevin Liska, who wanted a way to directly engage high school students as
advocates for their own road safety. The program, which is modeled after National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration best practices, incentivizes high school students
to complete traffic safety activities to earn points and win prizes.
“We’re kind of a like a Sears catalog of traffic safety activities,” said Stephanie
Scarborough, iCube program manager and project lead for Reduce TN Crashes. “Part of
what we do is pull from existing programs and initiatives, put them in one central
location and then offer incentives for students to take on these projects, compete
against other schools, earn points and raise awareness of traffic safety in the process.”
While securing a partnership with a state agency might be a heavy lift for some, Scarborough
explains that, in this case, the THSO was the one to approach Tech.
“They came to us and said, ‘We have all of these traffic safety programs that need
greater visibility. Can you work with us to create a unified program that brings everything
under one roof to help schools become aware of the great resources across the state
that are already available to them?’” said Scarborough. “That’s essentially what we
did.”
The 2023-2024 academic year was Reduce TN Crash’s most successful year to date, as
a record-setting 58 schools across the state completed safe driving activities, and
18 schools earned the coveted gold level status. Each school with a top-five finish
won a gift card sponsored by the Tennessee Road Builders Association. Local winners
included Stone Memorial High School and Cumberland County High School, which took
home second and fifth place in the state, respectively.
The program even earned plaudits from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
which noted in a 2019 study that, among the home counties for Reduce TN Crashes’ 15
most active high schools, car crashes involving 15-to-24-year-olds decreased in nine
of the 15 counties during the first three years of the program.
For Scarborough, a Tech alumna who has worked at iCube for more than a decade, the
project is both professionally and personally rewarding – especially when visiting
high schools to see students’ work firsthand and recognize their success.
“I don’t normally get choked up when I go to a school, but there was this one school
– Hampton High School over in Carter County – and they were so proud of what they
had done,” recalled Scarborough. “The excitement on their faces from what they had
accomplished and the impact they know they’ve had in their own community really is
something that keeps you motivated for the next year.”
With that motivation in hand, Scarborough and the iCube team are continuing to make
ambitious plans for the future of Reduce TN Crashes, including hopes of identifying
at least one gold level school in every region of the state and working with the Tennessee
Department of Education to add traffic safety standards as part of the curriculum
for K-12 health and wellness classes.
iCube boasts extensive experience in policy and advertising campaigns. It has long
been known for its Ollie Otter Booster Seat and Seat Belt Safety Program, which travels to schools to speak with elementary age students about the importance
of buckling up and booster seat usage. iCube also produced a recent THSO sober driving campaign with NASCAR driver Ross Chastain.
Learn more about iCube at www.tntech.edu/icube.
