Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers.

Today, a podcast about teen drivers.

Better put, the podcast about teen drivers. Better put, the podcast about teen drivers.

Johns Hopkins professor Jonathan Asani studies why teen drivers are at so much higher risk of serious crashes and what can be done to prevent them.

He shares his findings and advice with Dr. Josh Sharfstein. Let's listen.

Professor Jonathan Asani, it is so great to see you here

in public health on call. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Josh. Thank you so much for having me.

Now, I know you as a researcher who thinks a lot about teenagers driving cars. Is that a fair way to

think about your career? That is spot on. I've spent about 20 years

thinking about how teens drive and what can go right and what goes wrong. Tell me why this

particular problem interests you so much. It's a fascinating problem because it's the intersection

of learning, learning theory, learning new skills. It's also a parenting and family issue.

And it's also a big hidden public health problem. We lose around 16s a day to crashes.

And that's a shocking number when you think about it. And so I feel like both the public

health impact, but also the complexity of it is just really attractive to me.

Six teens a day, I mean, each one of those total devastation for that family.

Absolutely. Life's shattered and 180,000 teens are seriously injured each year.

So even if you don't have to face the horrible reality of losing a teen,

...