We had one goal: save teen lives on the roads.

Our mission began in 2008, when 4,000 American teenagers were killed in car accidents. That equates to 11 teenagers a day. As the #2 auto insurer, Allstate saw this tragedy and its aftermath first hand and felt compelled to do something about it.

Plenty of brands were already telling teens about the dangers of distracted driving and dramatizing the horrific possible outcome. The problem was, telling teenagers what to do simply doesn’t work. Not only do teens think they’re invincible, they are also prone to doing the opposite of what they’re told.

There was something that did work, though: letting teens gradually gain driving experience through laws that enforce it. A few states had passed strict teen driving legislation (officially known by lawmakers as Graduated Drivers Licensing), and lives were being saved in those states -- in some places up to 40%.

So when Congress was introduced to proposed legislation in 2009 that called for a national GDL law, Allstate immediately supported it. If we could take the best teen safe driving laws and combine them into one national bill, and help get it passed, thousands of teen lives would be saved. To change behavior we had to change the law.

That’s what we set out to do. Not an easy task, considering American politics. Our message had to speak to Congress in a way they couldn’t turn away from. We needed to give the teens we’ve lost a voice, pleading for change.

But previous attempts to gain traction on Capital Hill had failed twice already. We needed to rethink how we presented the problem, and do it in a way that caught the attention of Washington.

So we created a movement Congress couldn’t ignore – Save11.

Rather than harp on the statistic of 4000 teen deaths a year, we made the epidemic personal by introducing lawmakers to 11 teens who died in car crashes, and reminded them that every day they didn’t act, 11 more teens would die. We brought our message to members of Congress at every turn in their day and reminded them of the urgency.

While 97% of all bills introduced in Congress fail, ours didn’t. On July 6, 2012, President Obama signed a bill that included the most comprehensive teen driving laws in history. These new standards are expected to save over 2000 lives a year.