Sadly, across the country on nearly any given day during the holiday season, a family will receive the unbearable news that their teen has been killed in a car accident.
Just this past weekend, I learned of a high school senior in Minnesota who while driving the family van home from work only two nights before Thanksgiving, over-corrected a maneuver and then proceeded to lose control of the vehicle. The split-second error caused her to be ejected and her van to roll. Another car was involved and was carrying a family that included a Grandmother visiting for Thanksgiving. The family was on their way home from the Mall of America, and in a brutal twist of fate, they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. The grandmother died. The teenage driver on her way home from work was removed from life support four days later.
As a parent, the tragedy rips me to the core. Words cannot express adequate sympathy for the loss of this cheerleader and member of the homecoming court. I don’t know her, and I do not live in Minnesota. As the mother of a senior in high school, I don’t have to know her to understand what family life must have been like at this stage of her young life. I am sure many a dinner conversation talked about the future. College plans, career plans, etc. All of those plans squashed. Gone forever in the blink of an eye, and the direct result of choosing not to wear a seat-belt! Predictable and utterly unnecessary complacency in a teen. When life is going their way, they feel indestructible. They have little fear outside of not being accepted to the college of choice, and everything else in life becomes the “not me” attitude.
And now, she will live forever in the memories of her class as the girl who died her senior year tragically. She will be remembered at the ten-year class reunion and will have a full page memorial at the back of the yearbook. Her parents will not see her in cap and gown, and they will never know what she was to become after college. She will never plan a wedding or welcome her children into the world. The holiday season will never be what it once was. They will eventually be able to live again, but the dull ache that will live in their hearts will never dissipate. I do not know her, but her death affects me and reminds me not to become the complacent parent of a teenage driver.
She was not drunk. She was not out partying. She was returning home from work. Would she have survived the accident had she worn her seat-belt? We can’t ever know. The statistics though, were in her favor if she had chosen to wear the belt.
Where I live in Southern California, we hear a lot of the tragic deaths during the height of every social season. Holiday, Proms, and Graduations. You can search “teenager dies in car accident” in any given paper across the land and have no trouble finding current articles. Just last year on New Year’s Day, a young girl had just dropped off her friends and was driving too fast in the rain when she lost control of her small SUV and landed in a channel where she died. That was a brutal rainstorm, and my husband saw her lifeless body being pulled from the water, having no idea it was a dead child the age of his own. She was an only child, and her mother had buried her father only a couple of years earlier. Once again, I do not know the child or her family, but her death gripped me and stays with me. A preventable tragedy if only the teen had not become complacent, and instead might have chosen for just a moment to slow down.
Car safety is a talk you must often have! Every time your child leaves home, remind them to wear a seatbelt. Be a nag. Make it a habit. Place a post-it where they can see it near the stereo that tells them to follow all safety rules of the road. Demand that they never use a cell phone while driving. Make sure that you drive with them now and then to keep in check on their very new driving skills.
Have honest talks about drinking and driving. Tell your child to be on high alert during the holiday season for tired, hurried, or drunk drivers. Don’t ever have the attitude that it cannot happen to you. It can happen to any of us at any time! Share tragic stories of other teens. Don’t shield your child from reality. Please do not shield yourself, because the thought of a teenager dying is uncomfortable. This is one statistic that is very real. Keep your teens safe. Open up the conversation, sign a driving contract. When you keep the conversation alive, you can be sure in the back of their minds, they heed your advice, and appreciate your love!