| OPINION | TODAY • September 6, 2000 |
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Cynthia Tucker - Staff
Wednesday, September 6, 2000
This column has to start with a confession: I don't have any teenagers in my household. Nor do I have any preteens with busy calendars who have to be chauffeured from soccer to ballet to gymnastics. So I don't have the taxi-mom blues. I tell you this to offer a head start to those of you who will want to respond to this column with a stinging rejoinder of "You-don't-know-what-it's-like."
You're right. I don't.
Nevertheless, if I did have a car-obsessed teenager in my household, I don't think I'd give in. I don't think I'd give my 16-year-old his or her own car to drive any time. It's just too dangerous on the roadways of the Atlanta region.
(In addition to hearing from harried parents eager to stop providing taxi service, I may also hear from two teens whose moms are friends. Both girls are already engaged in pre-16th-birthday negotiations with their parents over driving privileges. Ashley and Kathleen, you will not like this column.)
Last week, four more metro teens were killed in an automobile crash. The accident that took the lives of Brett Bailey, 16, Nathan Deafenbaugh, 17, Amanda Samford, 15, and Rebekkah Evans, 16, last Friday night has in its details a certain numbing familiarity --- a bunch of kids in the car, a young and inexperienced driver behind the wheel.
The state roads and interstate highways of the Atlanta region are dangerous enough for mature drivers, who die frequently in car crashes, too. That's because the highways are jammed with stressed and distracted motorists driving too fast, following too closely and not paying enough attention. Motorists talk on their cell phones, eat and drink, attempt to calm children in the back seat, and even put on makeup or read --- all the while driving at 70 mph on a crowded roadway with a 55-mph speed limit.
But mature drivers have at least one thing going for them that younger drivers don't --- experience. That experience can make the difference when the unpredictable happens: a tire blow-out; another driver cuts you off; a wheel touches the shoulder of the road. Maturity also breeds a bit more caution, at least in most drivers.
So how can an adolescent gain experience if he or she doesn't drive? Let them drive, but with strict limits. Forgive me, Ashley and Kathleen, but I see no reason why a 16-year-old must drive to school every day. Not only is it too dangerous --- putting them on the roads during the morning rush hour --- but teen drivers add to the clogged highways and pollution that plague the Atlanta region.
Parents should discourage the driving-my-buddies-around syndrome. Experts say that a teen driver is more likely to become distracted and have an accident if there are other teens in the car. Indeed, a study by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that a 16-year-old carrying one passenger was 39 percent more likely to be killed than a teen driving alone; the risk increased to 86 percent with two passengers and 182 percent with three or more.
We should also enforce penalties for irresponsible behavior. The state Legislature should have stepped up penalties for teen drivers in its last session, but it failed to do so. So that duty falls to parents, where it belongs anyway. If your adolescent gets a ticket for a moving violation, he ought to have his driving privileges suspended.
While leaving a sad memorial service for a teen driver earlier this year, I heard another adolescent bragging about his new car and the risks he took in it. "Man, I'm a menace on the road!" he told another friend. I was struck by the disconnect between the tears he had shed for his friend --- just buried after a car crash in which she was the driver --- and the lack of caution he expressed.
Kids just don't get it, so we have to help them to understand: Driving is dangerous.
Cynthia Tucker's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays.
Editor of the Constitution editorial pages
e-mail: [email protected]