Saturday. Her friends want to go to the mall. She excitedly tells them she will drive because she just got her license. Gone are the days of the parent drop-off service, and she can’t be more excited. They blast their pop music, put the windows down and “seat dance” all the way to the mall.
Sunday. She has homework to do, so she hangs out in her living room with her family. They watch some football, laugh and eat snacks together. Her family shares stories over dinner; she talks about colleges.
Monday afternoon. School is finally over. She is exhausted, but she has to wait for her two friends because she takes them home. On the way home, she drops a CD at her feet, so she quickly goes to pick it up. When she looks up again it’s too late, the truck is right in front of her and is not slowing down. Nobody in their teen years should have his or her life taken, but unfortunately, motor vehicle deaths are a real problem in the U.S. amongst teens.
According to the Motor Vehicle Safety section of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for US teens. According to the same site, seven teenagers ages 16 to 19 die each day from motor vehicle injuries.
Schools need to stress that safety is more important than avoiding tardies. At my high school, students would get “in trouble” if they were late, so students would try to avoid tardies at all costs. The route from my house to school was like a racetrack.
Driver’s Ed programs need to emphasize preventing distracted driving. Most everybody knows that texting and driving is illegal, but I feel as though the programs need to stress other problems such as loud music. I am guilty of this as well, but loud music is very distracting and really takes one away from concentrating on the road.
Parents need to stress to their children the dangers of driving. People say, “Well, it will never happen to me,” but it does. Anything can happen to anyone, and though teenagers should not stress about driving, they should take it a lot more seriously than most do.
Driving a car is not a joke. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average vehicle weighs more than 4,000 lbs., which if traveling at 80 mph can really cause major damage. People drive often, so I understand that it gets to be second nature, but everybody should get in a car knowing that there is a risk.
One of my high school teachers told our class that driving will get easier, adding that she thinks it’s so easy that her mind actually goes blank when driving and when she gets to her destination she almost forgets how she got there.
That is not okay.
For the first eight years that my high school was open, four students have lost their lives due to car accidents.
Three of those deaths were frustratingly preventable. One was reaching for something she had dropped and crashed into a tree, the next was speeding and another did not wear her seat belt.
According to the News & Observer, a Panther Creek High School student just died this week from a car accident.
I was blissfully naive until I was eight years old when my dad was in a serious car accident. The EMT’s had to cut him out of the car, and when he arrived at the hospital, he was induced into a coma for two weeks. He was in the hospital for about six months. He had to re-learn how to talk, write, eat and walk. Twelve years later he still cannot lift his left foot, has chronic pain in that foot and has some short-term memory loss, as well as chronic hip pain. But, he was lucky. The passenger of his car, his boss and his friend, died on the scene. This man had a wife and a son.
The accident was caused by a man who made a stupid decision to make an illegal U-turn; my dad was simply sitting at a traffic light.
This accident could have been prevented.
