The Lane Ranger: Parental discretion is killing our kids
TEENAGERS ON WHEELS
Joey Ledford - Staff
Sunday, October 1, 2000

The fresh young faces stare at you from the newspaper page, 16 people with so much promise, so much to live for.

Tragically, all is lost. Each of the young people, the youngest just 14, the oldest 17, is dead, yet another casualty of our mean streets.

In just six months, as the AJC reported recently, 16 metro teens have died in highway crashes. And 16 sets of parents are wishing they had made different choices.

As lawmakers and safety advocates scramble to propose new laws, tougher sanctions, more restrictions, it's time to look closer to home.

That's where the problem is.

Kim Peterson, the WGST-AM afternoon talk show host known as "The Kimmer," angered the friends and families of the latest victims when he starkly declared Tuesday, just hours after one funeral, that the driver "deserved to die."

His approach was certainly controversial, his words painful, but beyond the rhetoric, his point was well-taken: Engage in risky behavior behind the wheel, and the chances are high you're going to pay the price.

Teenagers need to know that the price they may have to pay can't be fished out of daddy's pocket. It's their lives.

Why would any parent willingly place their 16-year-old son behind the wheel of a high-performance sports car? There is nothing any parent can say, no cautionary warning, no threat of punishment, that would keep any red-blooded American boy from seeing what that car will do on a strip of asphalt.

But a drive around the Perimeter isn't a NASCAR event, and Chastain Road isn't a drag strip.

Today's parents are understandably anxious to retire from 16 years of chauffeur duty. But they should wake up and realize that passing Georgia's joke of a driving test does not qualify a youngster to safely drive a car.

An adult with decades of driving experience might be able to survive in Atlanta traffic, where even the slowest driver is speeding and few seem to realize that tailgating and reckless lane changes can lead to death, serious injury or, at the very least, a totaled car.

But teenagers --- even those who have taken driver's education with its token six hours of road experience --- are not prepared for heavy, high-speed, manically aggressive traffic. They aren't prepared to drive in the rain, which magnifies any mistake. They aren't prepared to drive at night, when lights and shadows play tricks and obstacles are obscured. They certainly can't deal with all of the above plus a carload of boisterous friends and a blaring sound system.

But parents refuse to say no. Time after time, not only in metro Atlanta but across the nation, they hand their offspring the keys and never see them alive again. Instead of taking the time to make sure their teen has the experience, the maturity and the mind-set to handle a vehicle, they mindlessly set them free.

It's too much trouble to keep driving them to football practice, the school dance, the sleepover with friends --- or, all too often, the keg party.

Since it's quite clear that far too many parents can't and won't do their jobs, society steps in. Some lawmakers want to raise the legal driving age, but without giving teens the proper tools, a 17-year-old novice will fare no better than a 16-year-old. Requiring driving logs demonstrating supervised hours on the road seems like a good idea, but who ensures their accuracy? I fear many parents will sign anything their teen asks them to.

It was encouraging to see a statewide educational leader ---Linda Schrenko, no less --- step forward and say Georgia needs to mandate driver's education. She went even further and said the state needs to pay for it.

Driver's ed by itself also won't prepare a teen for traffic. But it's a solid start, and it's a class every teen should be required to take, either at school or from a private provider. Since they don't get the message at home, they need to sit and hear that when they don't wear a seat belt, a crash propels them through windshields or out windows; that a car becomes a pile of compacted metal, glass and rubber; and that people, even bulletproof, invincible teenagers, die.