RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina teenager who studied teen highway deaths as a senior high school project is dead after a crash.

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Eighteen-year-old Shannon Nicole Adkins graduated last spring after turning in a report about the risks facing young drivers on the mainly rural roads of Johnston County.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Monday that Adkins was the 27th Johnston County teen to die in a wreck since the start of 2006 and the second in just over a week.

The highway patrol said Adkins was driving a pickup truck when another pickup crossed into her lane Saturday night and struck her head-on.

The other driver was a 29-year-old woman who was hospitalized in fair condition and charged with driving while impaired.