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Leicester crash: Speed kills!
By jikamens on Sun, 04/22/2007 - 9:46am
I just sent this letter to the editors of several local newspapers:
To the editor:
Concerning the tragic, fatal car crash in Leicester, high school principal Tom Lauder said, "It's not like they did anything wrong." Unfortunately, he's wrong... dead wrong.
The speed limit where the crash occurred was 30 mph. Police believe that the driver was traveling as fast as 70 mph, over double the limit.
To find out where teen drivers learn to speed, most parents need only look in the mirror. The majority of Massachusetts drivers ignore speed limits as a matter of course. Is it any surprise that their teen-aged children, who have watched their parents speed for 16 1/2 years, emulate their behavior?
The recent changes to the Junior Operator License law will do little to reduce tragic accidents, as long as adult drivers continue to perpetuate a culture of disregard for the rules of the road. Perhaps rather than showing teens in driver's education classes videos of horrific accidents caused by speeding, the videos should be shown to their parents.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Kamens
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Comments
Teens emulating parents' driving behaviour?!
No, it doesn't come as any surprise. However, parents aren't the only influence that teens often have. Peer influence also frequently kicks in. Every time I read/hear of a teen being maimed or killed in a car crash, it sort of sends a chill up and down my spine. Here's wishing that the state (and all states) would do at least two things:
A) Show those nauseating videos of serious/fatal automobile accidents to both teens and parents.
B) Raise the driver's license age to 17 1/2, which would cut down on fatalities considerably (not that adults don't get killed in car crashed, btw), since at least 1 /4 of the fatalities involve teens under the age of 17 1/2. In many, if not most of the European countries, the driving age is 18, which is not much older than 17 1/2. 16-16 1/2 years of age is a good age for a learner's permit, but not for a driver's license, imo.
Raising the driving age
There have been studies which show that teenagers' brains are actually physiologically different. They really do evaluate risk differently from adults, and it's not just due to inexperience -- it's also due to real differences in the way their brains work. This would seem to support the idea of raising the driving age.
On the other hand, in this regard, a 17 1/2 year old is not much different from a 16 1/2 year old. So unless you're going to start talking about not letting them drive until well after they're in college, raising the driving age isn't really going to make that much of a difference.
The flaw in the logic that raising the driving age will make a difference is that it's not teen-aged drivers' *ages* that make them more likely to have accidents, it's their *inexperience*. If you raise the driving age, they'll be equally inexperienced when they start driving; they'll just be inexperienced and older.
On the other hand, perhaps you're right that they'll be slightly more mature and slightly less prone to giving in to peer pressure, both of which are factors that lead to an increased likelihood of accidents.
The first and last parts of your comment articulate the crux
(points) of the arguments in favor of raising the driver's license age perfectly, imo.
Require actual driver training would be a good start
When I switched my license to MA from OR, I was flabbergasted to find out what a joke the MA test was. I thought having actual bad roads and shitty signage and driving conditions might mean a higher bar.
Here is the constrast between my OR driving exam and my husband's MA exam:
Me: Comprehensive 60 question computerized (variable question) exam with passing grade of 80%, taken to get both the permit and just before the road test. Road test consisting of 45 minute comprehensive demonstration of a wide range of driving skills including unsigned intersections, freeway merge on/off. Passing grade on comprehensie inventory: 75%
Him: 10 fixed (non varying) question paper and pencil test. Victory lap around Cohasset Common at mid day with a parallel parking celebration.
Consequently, we have a lot of folks wandering the roads with cel phones and heads you know where, who have not been comprehensively tested on their knowledge of road rules and driving skills. Couple that with nasty conditions and youthful inexperience and we get dead kids.
Operating a vehicle is a privilege. It is also a piece of heavy equipment. Given the costs of owning and driving cars, raising the bar for road tests and knowledge of rules/laws would not cost diddly squat. It would screen out those who think they can drive just because they practiced parallel parking. Driver training and minimum skills need to be taken a lot more seriously, and monitored for deterioration at every renewal regardless of age. There are too many cars on the roads and the roads are in too lousy a shape to keep this 1935 mentality in place. Want to drive? Learn to drive and keep your skills and knowledge fresh.
My kids are going to have to pass the insurance institute test and my road test before they get on the road. I will pay the money to send them to skid school or skip barber so they learn that 30 mph can be beyond control in certain situations. The state should ask no less of new or current drivers.
They were speeding home to
They were speeding home to make their curfew. Read the news story in the Globe. It's isn't always teenagers being irresponsible, you know, or the fault of their parents. Have some sympathy for their families.
Sorry, anon, but I have to disagree with you somewhat here.
If these particular teens were speeding home to make their curfew, then they were being irresponsible. They should've started back home earlier in order to avoid speeding. To say that I'm being unsympathetic to the famiies of the teens who were killed in the crash is pure malarkey on your part. I'm sorry that the families lost their children, especially in such a horrific way.
What I said earlier is thatadolescence is a time when kids are most vulnerable to any kind of influence, from both parents and peers.
Curfews should be abolished
The legislators who created the curfew law are the real people responsible for these four deaths. The law should be repealed immediately.
Hogwash
You can, if you wish, debate whether the curfew law will in fact be effective at achieving its intended goals. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about this question, and there are good arguments to be made on both sides.
To blame our legislators, who held a reasonable belief that this law would help, for the fact that an irresponsible teenager felt that it was a better idea to stay out too late and then race home extremely unsafely, rather than driving safely, getting home late, and taking his lumps, is simply absurd.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the parents, families and friends of the killed and injured teens. I know what kind of pain they are going through, and I am sorry. But I am not at all sympathetic to the tired mantra of, "Don't speak ill of the dead -- it shows you don't have sympathy for the people who are hurting right now."
That kind of thinking is what prevents us from addressing these societal issues head-on. The time to talk about them *is* now, to strike while the iron is hot, because in another week everyone will have forgotten about this accident.
Please quit with the straw
Please quit with the straw man "don't speak ill of the dead" argument.
In this case, there was a human mistake. Your chinwagging letter to the editor is not going to fix anything.
If your letter gets published, the only people who will feel bad are the parents. They don't need to be told that their kids were "being irresponsible."
Best of luck on your pathetic attempt to pontificate.
Not a straw man at all
If you're worried that my letter might make the parents feel bad, then my argument is not a straw man at all. You're doing exactly what I'm arguing against -- saying that I shouldn't be "pontificating" about what happened because I'll hurt people's feelings.
My letter isn't directed at the parents of the teens who were killed. My letter is directed at the majority of drivers on our roads nowadays who speed, make turns and change lanes without signalling, steal left turns when the light turns green, cut people off, make left turns from the right lane and right turns from the left lane, cut across four lanes of traffic when they look up from their cell phone and realize they're about to miss their exit, and in general commit all the other minor and major traffic offenses which are visible on every road in the Commonwealth on a daily basis. My letter is directed at the drivers who do this with their children in the car and then are surprised when their children emulate their behavior when they get their licenses.
I was not always so particular about this. I had my share of years when I ignored speed limits and rationalized it away by saying that the speed limits were artifically low, and anyway, everybody was speeding so why shouldn't I? Then my wife asked me exactly what I was going to say to my children to explain why Daddy felt it was OK to break the law on a regular basis. I thought that through to its logical conclusion, which was that if I want my children to be responsible drivers, I have to be a responsible driver myself, and that means following the rules.
My point in explaining this is that if just one person reads my letter, scratches his/her head, comes to the conclusion, like I did, that we are responsible for modeling safe driving behavior for our children, and then, like I did, changes his/her driving behavior as a result, then my letter will have accomplished something invaluable. I have no way of knowing if that'll actually happen. But I think not trying at all is rather worse than trying and failing.
What jikamens just said, Anon.
The merits of curfew(s), whether they're put into place by parents or by legislators, or both, can be debated until the cows come home, but it's
never, ever going to change the fact that speeding is what killed those kids.
That being said, it's not straw to say that the parents are going to have to face up to the fact that their kids were speeding and, yes, they did sign their own death warrant by being irrresponsible.
My hunch is that, in this case, the teenagers' parents
are probably the ones who put their own, unofficial curfew on their kids. In any case, there really was no excuse for speeding on the part of the teenagers. Ever heard the expression "Better late than never"? Ok, maybe the teens in question would've gotten a little bit of the "what for?" from their parents, or, worst-case scenario, been grounded from car priveleges or whatever for a certain period of time, but the teens would still be alive right now if they hadn't been speeding.
OUR FRIENDS SHOULDNT BE TALKED ABOUT IN YOUR REDICULOUS COMMENTS
you all seriously should stop being so god damn rediculous as to fight over this you dont know what we lost get a god damn hobby
I think I have some idea
I have four children, soon to be five, God willing. While I thank God that I've never experienced the loss of a child, being a parent, I think I have some idea of what it might be like, so please spare me the lecture about how I have no idea of your pain.
In any case, how much pain people are in is completely orthogonal to the question of whether we live in a culture where unsafe driving is not only tolerated, but even expected, to such a large extent that people who drive the speed limit, use their turn signals, don't double park with their flashers on, etc., are frequently mocked as naifs.
i agree- this IS ridiculous.
i WAS related to one of the victims and while you say "I think I have some idea of what it might be like", you DON'T understand until it personally happens to you so that is completely false.
and yes, they did make a mistake and speed does kill but don't we all make mistakes that we regret? luckily, we're given second chances. they, unfortunately, were not. as my father says "that's why they still put erasers on pencils". we shouldn't attack their mistakes, they paid the ultimate price- they lost their lives. all we should do is learn from it and just pray that it does affect people's future decisions when they get behind the wheel.
Who's attacking?
We've done no more than you just did -- pointing out that mistakes were made. I, for one, have no intention of attacking anyone, except perhaps for the principal who made the bone-headed comment that the victims weren't doing anything wrong.
Frankly, you and the other friends and relatives of the victims are in a far better position than I to make something good out of what happened. If you where to use this as an opportunity to campaign for safer driving, people would listen.
If instead all you do is lash out at anyone who points out that there are cultural and societal influences which contributed to this accident, you're squandering that opportunity.
Very good point(s), jikamen.
To blame it solely on culture and societal influences, etc, is to obscure the fact that personal responsibility also kicks in here.
I, too am sorry aboutr the pain and sorrow that the families of the teenagers in question must go through, but that in no way precludes my opinion on the importance of the role that personal responsibility played in the teens' tragic and untimely deaths.
"Nature willing," and "I
"Nature willing," and "I thank nature."
Ooh, look, it's the atheist brigade
How droll.
How brave, oh anon, you must
How brave, oh anon, you must be to put words in someone else's mouth that you aren't willing to own yourself.
Herald printed my letter and ran two-page spread
The Herald printed my letter on April 24, giving it top billing in the highlighted column in the center of the letters page.
Even better, today's Herald front page says "`SPEED KILLS'" in two-inch letters (see http://news.bostonherald.com/galleries/images/2576..., which Universal Hub won't let me include as an embedded image), with a two-page spread on pages 4-5 with lots of material:
It's wonderful to see this. It could just be a flash in the pan, but there's always hope that this could finally be the time when some sort of critical mass is achieved and there are long-term changes.
Congratulations, jikamens!!
You should be very, very proud.
i completely disagree with
i completely disagree with you. i personally new Nathan and he was such a great kid. he NEVER did anything wrong. Nathan was only speeding home so that he could get the 4 other passengers in the car home in time, again being responsible he was just trying to do the right thing. Plaza was just trying to make curfew. I completely agree with the principal he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just being the responsible kid that he was trying to be home in time obeying the rules of his guardians.
Astounding
So, let me see if I've got this straight... When a teenager faced with the choice between (a) seeing some of his friends miss their curfews and (b) driving over 70 m.p.h. on a dark residential street in the middle of the night, chooses choice (b), you think that's "responsible" and there's nothing wrong with it?
That's really an astounding point of view.
It's a BAD choice. It's a stupid choice. It's a dangerous choice. It's an illegal choice. It is not a "responsible" choice. Is is a "wrong" choice.
I do try to see both sides in every debate, but I'm sorry, I don't think that this is simply something that reasonable people can disagree about. I think it entirely unreasonable and incorrect to assert that he was behaving responsibility or that he wasn't doing anything wrong.