Deadly speed trap claims teen-agers
/St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Beverly Beckham
Change the names and the date; the story is always the same. A boy who is upset is followed to his car by a girl. She tries to calm him down, gets in the front seat and winds up dead. Two teen-agers with fast cars drag to see whose souped-up engine is more powerful and never find out because they die trying. A young, inexperienced driver gets behind the wheel of a car built for speed, takes a corner too fast and is history.
And always, families are shattered, friends are shocked, the line at the wake is long, the eulogies are heartbreaking, the pictures in the paper grim. How did it happen? And why, God, why?
At this moment, my teen-age son is upstairs. Because I know where he is, because he isn't in a car, because it's daylight and the sun is shining, because for now he is safe, I, too, feel safe.
But tonight he'll be out again, and I'll worry and pray and make bargains with God and shudder when I hear an ambulance in the distance and stare at the phone and hate myself for hoping that he isn't the one who is hurt, that it's someone else being rushed to the hospital. And I'll keep worrying and praying until I hear the car in the driveway, followed by footsteps, and the awaited, "Hey, Mom, I'm home."
"Look at these pictures," I say, now, as I've said so many times before. "Look what happens when you drive too fast. Do you see? Do you understand?"
"Don't worry, Mom. Nothing's gonna' happen to me," he answers, and believes, is certain, because he is 17 and strong and healthy and knows he will live forever.
I try to believe, too. I try to delude myself so that I can function, so that I can make it through another night without going crazy.
Hey, don't worry. He'll be okay. He's young. All young kids drive too fast. I did, you did, everyone does. This is what I hear all the time. As if, because everyone does, it's okay. As if speeding and testing the fates is some kind of adolescent rite of passage.
Well, it isn't. Kids shouldn't be speeding, and they wouldn't, couldn't be speeding, and mothers wouldn't be worrying so much if automobile manufacturers built cars that didn't go so damn fast.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it against the law in this country to go over 55 miles per hour? Why, then, does the car in my driveway have 75 as its mid-mark? Why does the speedometer go up to 150 miles per hour? Doesn't this say something about how the car is supposed to be driven? Doesn't this tempt even the most conscientious among us?
Wouldn't it make sense, wouldn't it save lives, if cars were designed to adhere to the speed limit, instead of flouting it, if cars couldn't go faster than 55?
I know. I know. Speeding and breaking the law probably are inalienable rights, guaranteed by the Constitution, the removal of which would infringe upon our freedom. A car that goes just 55 I can already hear the American Civil Liberties Union objecting.
But forgive me if I don't understand.
"I trust you," we say as we hand our inexperienced young drivers the keys to a turbocharged, made-to-speed car.
I trust you. What, to follow the speed limit? Why should they? We don't.
I trust you to drive a car at a quarter of its speed? Come on. Who would? Who does?
I trust you to act better than an adult when you're only a child, to put out of your mind the years of car chases you've watched on TV, to be sensible and mature when you're not sensible and you're still immature.
"Why, God. Why?" we ask every time we bury another child.
Why? Because we allow it. We permit it. I permit it. "Be careful," I'll say tonight. But what good is a mild warning against a car that's too fast, a speed limit that no one obeys and a lifetime of watching television heroes go 90 miles per hour down a one-way street and come out alive.
No, our children won't stop dying simply because we tell them to be careful. They'll stop dying when we decide it's time to slow down, when we demand and buy cars that don't accelerate from zero to 50 in 10 seconds, when we let the automobile makers know that our children and their safety, not speed, is our top priority.
