By Bill Hendrick
Atlanta
Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Nick and Becky Bailey had settled in to watch TV. It was the evening of Sept.
1, and a Braves game was on. Atlanta, in the midst of a stretch run, was playing
Houston.
About 10 p.m., between innings, Becky left the room to check on a load of
laundry. Nick, channel surfing, caught a news flash.
Three teenagers had been killed in a traffic accident not far away, in north
Fulton County.
Bailey felt his heart leap. He knew his 16-year-old son Brett was out on the
road with friends.
Still, there was no reason to jump to conclusions. Brett had gone to a high
school football game in Cumming. "I couldn't picture Brett being where they
said the wreck was," recalls Bailey, 47.
But Brett, a conscientious kid who always called home at 11 p.m. to check
with his parents, failed to phone. And he didn't answer their call to his
cellphone, either.
Bailey turned to his wife. "Oh, me, that was them," he said.
The couple frantically called police and hospitals. Nothing.
"At 1:15 a.m., we just took off looking for him," Bailey says.
The Baileys knew Brett had planned to meet a fellow Sequoyah High junior,
Nathan Deafenbaugh, 17, so they drove to his son's friend's house.
"Didn't you know? Nathan got killed at 8:30 tonight," Nathan's
father told the Baileys. "And -- didn't you know? -- there were three
others in the car, and they got killed too.'"
Nick Bailey turned to his wife. "He was in that car," he said.
Brett and Nathan had gone out with two girls. Because it was raining, the
girls had talked the boys into going bowling in Duluth instead of the football
game.
All four had been killed when one of the girls, a 16-year-old, lost control
of her Mercedes-Benz on Medlock Bridge Road, crossed the median and drove into
the path of a Jeep Cherokee.
Brett Bailey and his friends account for four of 29 Atlanta area teens killed
this year in accidents involving teen drivers.
So many deaths, so much fear. Yet what can parents do? In metro Atlanta there
seem to be few good choices.
The Baileys, understandably, feel guilty. Brett's death has forever exiled
them to a bleak world of what-ifs and what-might-have-beens.
"Everything I knew to do, I did," says Brett's mom, sobbing.
"We had spent a lot of time teaching him to drive. He was a good driver. He
was a responsible boy. He was in ROTC and an honor student. He called me from
the car on my cell phone when he got to school every morning to let me know he
was there. He deserved a license.
"You just try so hard to do right, and this happens. I wouldn't want any
parent to have to go through this. But what else could we have done?"
Other parents wrestle with the same question, yet driver-testing facilities
are crammed daily with 16-year-olds -- neophytes who, along with those ages 85
and up, are mile-for-mile the most likely drivers to die on the road.
"It's tough for parents to deny their teens the privilege, especially if
their kids earn good grades and have stayed out of trouble," says Dr.
Michael Popkin, an Atlanta psychologist and author of the "Active
Parenting" book and video series.
"Try being the only parent to tell your teen he has to wait until he is
17 and you're likely to start a revolution," Popkin says. "People want
equality. Nowhere is this more true than with our teens."
Even if a parent can buck the peer pressure, how will the kid get around?
"If a parent really wants to make the decision that their kid isn't ready
to drive the minute they turn 16, we as a region don't make it easy," says
Charles Walston, a spokesman for the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority.
"There are not a lot of areas where there are buses or trains that kids can
ride. A lot of areas don't even have sidewalks. We have virtually no bicycle
lanes."
"It's hard to know what to do, a real dilemma," says Doug Bachtel,
an expert on family dynamics at the University of Georgia.
Bachtel advocates raising the driving age from 16 to 17. But he says it's not
reasonable to expect parents to invoke such a rule, delaying a rite of passage
and curtailing kids' freedom, all by themselves.
"Let's just don't blame young people and parents for this," Bachtel
says. "With these horrific death rates, legislators are going to have to
step up to the plate and take the lead and make the driver's age 17. But
legislatures move at the speed of a retaining wall. So we're going to see this
carnage continue, I'm afraid, for a long, lone time."
Gov. Roy Barnes has called for the legal age to be raised to 17, and so have
a few state legislators. But previous efforts to change the driving age in
Georgia have failed.
In the meantime, the death toll will certainly grow. Nick Bailey knows,
better than most parents, that more mothers and fathers will wind up suffering
"like I do every waking minute of every day."
The Baileys are trying to take some action on their own. They're laying the
groundwork to make their 14-year-old daughter, Jamie, realize she might not get
a license in two years.
"It's a real hard dilemma. It's a madhouse on the roads around here, a
zoo," Nick Bailey says. "But you can't lock them up. You can't punish
them if all their friends are driving and they are good kids. That wouldn't be
fair."
The Baileys had set a rule for Brett, too. He was supposed to drive himself,
not ride with a kid unknown to the parents. He broke that rule.
"I don't know what we could have done differently, but I wish we
had," Bailey says. "Brett wasn't supposed to be riding with other
teenagers. We thought he was driving himself.
"In hindsight, the only thing we could have done was make him stay at
home. But how could we have done that? It wouldn't have been fair to
Brett."
Recalling the tragedy
In the wee hours of Sept. 2, after leaving Nathan Deafenbaugh's house, the
Baileys held out hope that somehow their son had survived. They drove to the
scene of the accident, but no one was there. So they stopped at a hospital in
North Fulton.
Nick Bailey asked, "All I want to know is the truth. Is he dead, or
injured? I can't find him."
But a woman wearing a paper gown replied only, "We're not allowed to
give out that information."
Finally the Baileys got ahold of the Fulton County morgue. The woman on the
phone confirmed the worst. There was a body, with Brett's wallet and ID. The
clothes were Brett's.
The Baileys embraced, sobbing, hopeless.
"There wasn't any point then in going and identifying him," Nick
Bailey recalls now. "We knew there was no doubt. ...
"I keep asking myself, what if things would have happened differently
that night. What's the odds of all of them getting killed if they had been in
two or three different vehicles? I ask myself that question a hundred times a
day. It seems like sometimes, things are out of control, even when you do the
best you can do.
"One second can make the difference between life and death. One
decision. But we're all in a hurry going nowhere. If that car had been hit in
the front and not the side, they might all be OK."
"They were good buddies," Becky Bailey injects, crying, referring
to her husband and son. "They were always together."
Nick Bailey pauses, choked with emotion. "I had a dream the other night,
I saw Brett, and he just looked up at me. We've had a lot of family and friends
come over to talk, and it helps," he says. "But it doesn't stop the
pain, and it probably never will."
Staff researcher Richard Hallman contributed to this article.