I got my license on my birthday because I couldn't wait one more day.
The morning of my birthday.
The day of my birthday, which is August 30th.
It was just like a freedom.
The ultimate freedom.
I wanted my license very badly.
Very badly.
I'm just so tired of taking the metro bus everywhere I have to go.
If you want to go out on a date, you're like, can you take me, your mom?
That's why kids want their licenses so quickly is because they just want to leave the house.
Kids in the United States get their licenses earlier than in most other countries, and
they have easier access to cars once they're licensed.
This combination means a very high risk of crashes, from minor ones to crashes that cause
injury and death.
If you look at teenagers in general, take the 16 to 19 year old age group, and you look
at their crash involvement rates on a per mile driven basis, they're much higher than
any other age group, including the elderly.
In that 16 to 19 year old age group, 16 year olds are particularly high, particularly at
night.
The nighttime crash rates are almost off the boards.
Two main factors, youthful age and lack of driving experience.
Young drivers, because of their young age and immaturity in some cases, are simply more
risky drivers.
They take more chances on the road.
I've got friends that go back in the bannock burn and play a game called name of the game.
Name of the game, no lights.
Name of the game, no brakes.
It's not the safest thing in the world.
Teenagers are more likely to speed, they tailgate.
It's fun to tailgate because the person goes crazy and they're just going as fast as they
can and just like right up behind them.
They do other aggressive driving acts.
It's just the thrill of it, just going fast.
Yet they're inexperienced at driving because obviously they're just beginning.
I know a friend who wrecked his car, they got his license after having it for eight
hours.
They're less able to perceive hazards on the road.
They simply don't see them the way a more experienced driver does.
I did two car accidents within a nine hour period.
I rear-ended somebody.
I hit a telephone pole with my truck.
They're overconfident about their own abilities.
I think I'm a safe driver.
I think I drive real well.
I'm a good driver.
So you've got risky driving practices, failure to be able to see hazards the way more experienced
drivers do and an overconfidence factor and that's a pretty lethal combination.
She just loved people.
She made friends easy and she had a lot of friends.
Brenda was a good student.
She loved to learn.
She was really looking forward to going to college and I never will forget when she had
been looking, she had been watching the mail close for her acceptance letter to see if
she got into JMU and she went to the mailbox that day and she came on back.
She came through that door and she said, yes, yes, yes.
She opened up the envelope, you know, and she looked and she read it and she said, I
can see on there, she just, yes, yes, yes, she said.
It was a beautiful January day.
The sky was so pretty and blue and the sun was bright and it was just a lovely day and
that particular day, she didn't have to be to school until 11 o'clock.
She sit there and she ate a bowl of cereal and she changed clothes three times before
she left.
When she got in the truck, she put a seat belt on.
When she sit in a vehicle, if she was going to drive or if she was riding, she always
put a seat belt on.
And anyway, that morning the police camera was on and I just, in the back of my mind,
I heard them say that there had been a bad accident on Route 130.
And I get on down there and there's a fireman in the road, you know, directing traffic and
I can see a truck and I could see the bumper and I saw the sticker and I knew it was that
truck.
So I pulled over to the side of the road and I asked that fireman, I said, a little girl
driving that truck, I said, is she hurt bad?
He said, are you kin to her?
I said, yes, I'm her mother.
And at that time, two rescue squad workers, one got one side of me and one got on the
other side.
And I said, the little girl driving that truck, I said, is she hurt bad?
And the woman said, yes, ma'am.
I said, is she dead?
She said, yes, ma'am.
She was an inexperienced driver who died in a crash just one month after getting her license.
Inexperience contributes to many crashes involving beginners.
Should parents rely on driver education and training to prevent some of this?
Driver education can help young people learn their skills, but parents shouldn't rely
on it because so many crashes with young drivers involve their attitudes, not their skills.
She got her license on her 16th birthday.
She got her car on her 16th birthday.
She had waited for it.
We had waited for it.
We were just as anxious for her to have her license as she was to have her license.
She was probably the kind of child that every parent would hope to have.
She took everything life had to offer and made the most of it.
She had danced for almost 15 years.
She had been a competitor in gymnastics, percussionist in the band.
And she loved everything she did, and she could never get enough.
Unfortunately, Shannon was 16.
She was a teenager behind the wheel.
She was going to a slumber party that night, and Shannon had a passenger in the car.
And her friend had passed her.
And probably a combination of, let me see what my little four-cylinder car can do, Rebecca
saying, come on, Shannon, pass Heidi.
And as Shannon tried to pass Heidi, Heidi moved over so Shannon couldn't get by her.
She lost control of the car, and she was hooked up to life support for 24 hours.
She got caught up in the spirit of the moment, a little bit of peer pressure, a lot of being
a teenager and thinking you're invincible.
It won't happen to me.
Shannon's crash was like many other serious ones involving teenagers.
It was at night, and it involved speeding and thrill seeking.
Could restrictions for young beginning drivers help prevent this?
What you need is a system that allows them the opportunity to have mobility and accessibility,
allows them the opportunity to get experience, but to get that experience under conditions
of controlled risk.
And that's a method that has come to be formalized in something that's called graduated licensing.
You begin with a set of restrictions that are imposed on the new driver.
For example, restrictions in terms of when, where, how, or with whom you can drive, a
common one being, say, a nighttime curfew.
Restrictions in terms of the number and perhaps the ages of the passengers, the requirement
for having supervised accompaniment for a period of time, no alcohol whatsoever.
These restrictions then are gradually removed so that the new driver is gradually being
introduced into more and more demanding driving situations, but doing so having gained the
experience in the preceding period.
So it's stepwise, it's systematic, it's progressive.
Besides gradually introducing beginners to more demanding driving situations, graduated
licensing limits opportunities for immature behavior like partying in cars.
Gabriel always had a smile on his face, and so did everybody around him.
He very best of kids, utter old, kept the rules, everybody loved him.
The driver was driving too fast, and there was one of Gabriel's favorite songs on the
radio.
And so it's party time, and she was in the back seat, and he was in the front seat, dancing
with her.
He was up, dancing with her, and the driver might well have been distracted by that.
Gabriel was not wearing a seatbelt, he always wore a seatbelt, he used to tell me to wear
a seatbelt.
It's late at night, multiple teenagers, radio going on, and not much experience in driving.
Here he was in a moment of carelessness, an unguarded moment of carelessness, and he was
dancing in a car instead of looking straight ahead with a seatbelt on, he was dancing with
the girl in the back seat.
And the driver was carried away also, with the party that was going on in his car, as
what happened to 16 year olds.
And the driver was not seriously hurt physically, the little girl was not seriously hurt physically.
Gabriel's not here anymore.
Gabriel wasn't even driving.
He was a passenger having fun in the car, and like many teenagers, he was breaking rules,
like always using a seatbelt.
Teenagers don't recognize the risks, and they think they're invincible.
They show a party that's like, it's not going to be me, so why should I worry about it?
Everyone has that attitude that it's not going to happen to me, because you just don't think
it's going to.
Peer pressure can lead any teenager to ignore rules set by adults.
If I'm in the car with my mom, I'll try to speed limit and make sure I turn on all my
blinkers and everything, but if you're in a car with your friends on a Friday night,
some of those things just kind of go out the window a little bit.
Graduated licensing can help, and it's successful in other countries.
We should have graduated licensing in the United States too, but with or without it,
things can help minimize the risk for their children.
Make sure teenagers get plenty of supervised driving, even after they get their licenses.
Prohibit unsupervised driving late at night.
Keep children out of cars full of other teenagers.
Insist on no alcohol, and on belt use all the time for everyone in the car.
Make sure teenagers stay out of unsafe cars, especially small cars and high-performance
models.
And remember, the highest risk for young drivers is at night with other teens in the car.
This is when peer pressure is most likely to lead to immature and dangerous behavior.
I was trying to peel out, because it was raining though, and I was trying to peel out and do
like skids and stuff, but it just went into a, I'm not lying, it went into a 360 and it
went into a gas station and hit like the curb.
It wasn't nice.
I got in big trouble.
I get the gas pedal next to the brake, which could be a problem, but I don't know.
I mean, I almost turned down a one-way street, but that's okay, you learn these things as
you go along, it's not that bad.
You just keep going, but you never really get over it.
You never really...
There's no way in the world you can get over losing somebody, especially a child.