Your heart goes out to any parent who loses a son or a daughter in a car crash. But that question immediately comes to mind when you learn the circumstances of metro Atlanta's latest teen tragedy.

A friend might let you take a spin in his 2001 Jaguar XKR, providing you're not 16 with a brand new driver's license. But no parent should even consider it - even for a short errand. Any 16-year-oold boy, even the most reliable son in town, would be sorely tempted to see what that baby will do when given a chance to drive it.

"I don't know where these parents are coming from," said Debby Bunn of Acworth, whose daughter is two months away from a license. "The parents just turn the keys over." Bunn said her family owns a Porsche, but it is totally off-limits, even to her 20-year-old daughter. "Never in a million years would I let my kids drive that car," she said. "It's just too dangerous."

Elizabeth and Olaf Roed of Duluth have a collection of American muscle cars and can afford to buy their children any kind of car they want. But that's not their choice. "The first thing we told our kids was that we weren't going to buy them a car," said Elizabeth. "We will match every dollar they save. We think that when a teenager buys their own car, they take more care of it and they drive more carefully."

The Roeds' 16-year-old daughter will have to wait until 17 to drive, her mother said, "because she's not mature enough."

"My son will be 18 in the spring and he can have only one passenger in his car," she said. "He's never been [on the interstate]. He does not drive after midnight. He's not allowed to drive when it's raining.

"They need more experience," she said.

Troy Ayers, the regional administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, recalls teaching driver education years ago at a private school in the north metro area. "Those kids were driving Porsches, BMWs and Corvettes into the school parking lot," he said. "It leads one to believe that parents are just not understanding a brand new driver in their first car."

It's a tough decision for a parent who is trying to decide whether to buy a teenager a car. But Ayers said the last thing to do is put them behind the wheel of a high-performance automobile. "I'd pick one that's a little larger, so if they have a crash they'd have a better chance of surviving," he said.

Byron Bloch, a Washington-based auto safety consultant, said teens, all of whom are prone to crash, have the best chance of surviving if the vehicle weighs at least 3,200 pounds, a guideline that rules out subcompacts and many two-door sedans.

Parents should avoid powerful engines at all costs. In fact, Linda Young of Cumming suggests that cars driven by teens should be equipped with speed-regulating governors. She suggests teens be limited to 50 mph.

Roed said her son's friends tool about in new BMWs and Lexuses.

"These kids crash all the time and they get a new car the next week," she said. "It's not teaching them anything. . . . I think parents need to be tougher and be brave enough to say no.

"Be a parent," she said. "Don't be your child's friend."