Horns honked and students cheered yesterday as Waipahu High School's junior varsity football players raised awareness about the No. 1 killer of teenagers: teenage drivers.

Car accidents claim more lives among teenagers than homicides and suicides, according to the Allstate Foundation.

The football players, who are not yet old enough to drive, stood outside their campus with their handmade signs and lobbied their classmates to drive safely after attending an all-day workshop at the Ala Moana Hotel.

"Everybody went walking in the middle of the tunnel and we handed out key chains and stickers," said Cornelius Fitiausi, a Waipahu High School football player. "We held signs on the road, and cars passed by and beeped."

The football players, along with members of a Pearl City High School English class, attended yesterday's "Keep the Drive" program, a national teen-to-teen education program sponsored by the Allstate Foundation to encourage teenagers to drive smart.

The 75 students from the two schools now will work on keeping their classmates just as charged up as they are about driving safely. They could win as much as $10,000 for the best driver-safety activism campaign for their school and as much as $3,500 for themselves for the best published student-written news story raising awareness for teens to make safe choices behind the wheel or or as a passenger.

This is the first time the Allstate Foundation has come to Hawai'i, said Meaghan Hagensick, foundation teen leadership trainer. Nationwide, the program travels to about 20 communities, training about 150 students at a time in how to bring the message home on driving smart and safe.

The message makes even the most hardened teen cringe a bit. And it's not done with pictures of blood or crashed cars. The message is driven home by empowering a few campus leaders to spread the word.

"We want to start a spark," Hagensick said. "We want them to go back to school and educate each other about safe driving."

For the football team, the workshop session was a way for the team to take the lead in driving safely, said Bryson Carvalho, Waipahu High School junior varsity coach. It also is a way for the teens to show pride in themselves and their school.

The football players drew posters using markers, paint and pipe cleaners, wrote lyrics for rap songs and planned the rally after school to educate others in their community about the need to wear seat belts, drive without distractions, not drink and drive, and not speed.

"It's important that they understand that when they start driving, they know safety," Carvalho said. "They're responsible for themselves and others on the road."

English students at Pearl City High School are planning an April mock car crash. They're writing a script and plan to act it out with firefighters, Emergency Medical Services personnel and police, said Gay Ching, who brought 41 sophomores and juniors from her class yesterday.

"We're gathering research so we can back up our crash scene," said Brendan Ige, a Pearl City High School junior. "It's not just about a day out of school. I'd say something if someone was driving and they weren't following the law. If they died, it would be on my hands if I didn't say anything."

Patrick Enriquez, a 16-year-old junior at Pearl City High, is in the process of getting his license now. He's accruing his hours behind the wheel and hopes to be licensed in January. He's working on the mock crash script, and the stats are scary.

"It's pretty serious when you're dealing with someone's life," Enriquez said. "Distraction from texting and speeding are the top causes of teen crashes."