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The
Young and the Reckless
On August 22,
2004, the last night of her life, 16-year-old
Sarah Gillette hung out at a friend's house
with two other kids and watched Gone with the
Wind on DVD. After the movie ended, the
teens got an instant message from another
group of kids, asking them to go out for a
late snack. And shortly after midnight,
Sarah-beautiful, long-haired Sarah who spoke
French and German and dreamed of going to
college in Europe-climbed into a borrowed SUB
with an unlicensed 14-year-old girl behind the
wheel.
That SUV,
with eight teenagers inside, was soon speeding
along a curving, wet, hilly road in the
Seattle suburb of Bainbridge Island,
Washington. The driver was
"roofing"-the local term for
cresting hills so fast that passengers' heads
hit the car roof. Not long before Sarah
was due home, the driver hit an estimated 80
miles an hour, flipped the car, and crashed
into a patch of trees.
Traffic
accidents are the leading cause of death among
American teenagers, and the numbers are going
up. Part of the explanation for why kids
are such dangerous drivers may lie in the teen
brain itself: A 2004 study from the National
Institute of Mental Health found that the part
of the brain that moderates risk taking isn't
fully formed in late adolescence.
For
unlicensed teenagers, who haven't had the
benefit of proper training, driving is an even
riskier proposition. From 1998 to 2002,
there were 2,452 fatal crashes involving
unlicensed young drivers, according to a
soon-to-be-published report by Christian L.
Hanna, a program director for the federally
funded Children's Safety Network.
The
dollars and cents
Let's say your unlicensed teenager gets
into a nonfatal accident but does some
damage. Who pays? You. The
driver's parents-policyholders for the
household-are most likely to be held
liable. Courts would probably find the
parents that had given the young driver
implicit consent (perhaps by leaving the
car keys out), and the parents' insurance
company would have to pay out. "You
could possibly have your rates increased, or
you may even be dropped altogether as a
client," says Julie Rochman, a
spokeswoman for the American Insurance
Association.
And what if
your insurance policy covers damages up to
$250,000 but the claimant wins a judgment for
a million dollars? "Your insurance
will pay up to the limit of the policy, but
you could be on the hook for the rest,"
Rochman says. "You could be
financially devastated. The larger
question is not whether your rates will go up,
but whether you will be able to keep your
home, your car, or other assets."
Preventing
an accident
Police, parents, and community leaders who
are involved in the problem of underage
driving offer the following suggestions:
- Talk to
middle school kids about driving. By
that age, they are old enough to have
developed grandiose illusions about their
skills, bred by experiences with video
games and motorized scooters. They
need to know that driving is complicated
and requires education.
- Keep keys
out of reach of anyone in the household
who doesn't have permission to drive.
- Skip the
funny stories about surviving your own
teenage driving pranks.
(Article
taken from July 2005 edition of Good
Housekeeping)
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