Crazy wreck just next door (1 Viewer)

[Danny R]

But take a look at what I woke up to early this morning not 50 feet from my front door.
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_art...?storyid=18342
I still can't see how they did it. While the road has a
very slight curve at that point, visibility isn't impared. My guess is that a dog, possum or rabbit ran out in front of them, and because they were probably somewhat impared by alcohol they totally overreacted and slammed on the brakes and tried swerving. From the pictures its hard to tell, but the SUV definately rolled a couple of times, breaking the axels and crushing the far side of the vehicle.
From the skid marks (beginning a good hundred feet up the road), they were definately gunning the accellerator as well and racing through the neighborhood. They had to have been flooring it just prior to the accident.
Don't know how I should feel about these sort of tragedies. Atlanta has had a pretty high number of teen deaths this year. And driving while drinking is drummed into these kids. You would think they might learn.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Kids always think nothing bad is going to happen to *them*.

I wish the driving license test was harder, and the legal age to drive needs to be raised, but that's just me.

 

[Mark Larson]

Ha ha. Thrown out, eh? My goodness, wearing seatbelts is just so passe!

 

[Chris Bardon]

Thrown out...not wearing seatbelts...possibly impared.

Maybe society got lucky and they won't be able to breed...

Seriously, I don't think that it has anything to do with age, but with Maturity. I'm all for tougher driving tests though-they really don't prove that you know much about how to drive in the "real" world. I remember what my father said the day I got my licence "that says you know how to point the car: now you can learn how to actually drive"

 

[Julian Reville]

Late night party..
Teenagers....
$30,000 car...

Gee, where were the parents in this paradigm?

 

[Scott Van Dyke]

Right on Chris!

Natural Selection was at work here.

 

[Chet_F]

"Gee, where were the parents in this paradigm?"

There is the key to the puzzle...parental supervision seriously lacking.

 

[Ron-P]

We've all done stupid things as teens. I can remember a few of mine. Hopefully, all this just ends up being a good wake-up call for them, but...

Although there is no official word on the teen-agers current condition, it's believed all three suffered severe head injuries

...this is not good.
Peace Out~

 

[Andy Hardin]

I'm with Ron.

Pretty harsh comments up there for some kids that made some bad choices and are now paying for it. Hell, my parents were like the Gestapo and I still ended up in these situations, except for I didn't crash and then have people make fun of me on a message board.

Also, no actual word the driver was drunk/high/etc. The way these things are reported, that "neighborhood party" could have been a group of a dozen kids with a couple of X-Boxes wired together playing Halo, or it could have been a raging kegger.

Hope they are OK.

 

[Ron-P]

There is the key to the puzzle...parental supervision seriously lacking.

:rolleyes
Well, there does come a point in time when you let your kids drive away w/o you (the parent) being there. Not much supervision a parent can do then.
Sure, your parents can teach, teach, teach, but somethings in the name of fun, that teaching goes right out the window.
Lighten up fella's
Peace Out~

 

[Chet_F]

"Pretty harsh comments up there"
Well it's a pretty harsh world too. And unforunately these kids will be learning the hard way. If it turns out that it was TRUELLY an accident, I'll eat my words but from my experience if it looks like a dog, barks like a dog, and smells like a dog, it's probably a dog. No offense but that's just reality and I'm simply making an educated guess based on what is in the article. I've seen this scenario too many times and actually been an active participant. Yes...that's right I'm not perfect...I've made my share of mistakes. But nothing that serious. And I too hope they will recover. Just my opinion though

 

[Dustin B]

I don't think the license age needs to be raised. Could even be lowered. But the standards that have to be met to get the license need to be raise not just a little, but a whole bunch.

While learning, kids should be given the oppertunity to handle a vehicle in emmergency manouvers under varing conditions not just once or twice, but dozens of times. And 70% should not be a pass for rules of the road tests either.

Also the penalties for DUIs needs to be raised. Say a several thousand dollar fine and the loss of your license for a year or more.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Let's just say that people don't have to be drunk to be driving impared. Stupidity loves company, and sometimes just getting four teenagers together makes them more imared than if they'd had twenty beers. I think we've gathered this much from the story so far:

-The road conditions were not adverse
-Nobody was wearing seatbelts

I'm sorry, but this last one just screams sheer idiocy. I don't care how old you are-why you'd ever want to be in a car without a seatbelt is beyond me. There are some cases where you have to say that people deserve what they get for flagrantly denying an obvious safety precaution. Hopefully, something like this will teach these kids some common sense, but it's a damn shame that it'll probably take something this severe.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I wish the driving license test was harder, and the legal age to drive needs to be raised, but that's just me.

Since January 1, the state of Georgia has put restrictions on teen driving, due to a rash of high-profile teen accidents & fatalities in the Atlanta area such as this one. The state now requires an on-the-road driving test, parking lot maneuvers are no longer sufficient. No one under 18 can drive between midnight and 6 AM, with no exceptions for jobs or school functions or any other reason. No non-family passengers are allowed during the first six months, and after that no more than 3 unrelated passengers until age 21.

And you should hear all the whining from both teens and inconvenienced parents.

But since I'm well past 18 and I have no young'uns, it would suit me fine if they raised the driving age to 18. That would coincide quite well with my observation that student parking spaces at my high school and my university have become new buildings in the years since I graduated from both.

 

[Chris Bardon]

I don't think that the 12-6 AM restriction makes any sense, but I like the non-family passengers idea. No restrictions like that here, but I remember when I first got my licence my dad's rule was that there was only one other person in the car, and that that person had to be female. A far cry from some other friends' rules, but I didn't complain too much. The logic, incidentally, was that idiocy tends to decrease with women around, which to some extent is true (at least when you're sixteen).

 

[MikeAlletto]

Since January 1, the state of Georgia has put restrictions on teen driving, due to a rash of high-profile teen accidents & fatalities in the Atlanta area such as this one. The state now requires an on-the-road driving test, parking lot maneuvers are no longer sufficient. No one under 18 can drive between midnight and 6 AM, with no exceptions for jobs or school functions or any other reason. No non-family passengers are allowed during the first six months, and after that no more than 3 unrelated passengers until age 21.

I'd complain also. Not EVERY teen is a crazed driver. Its because a few bad accidents that ruins it for everyone. They'll throw statistics all over the place and say they are right, but there are plenty of good teenage drivers out there. You don't hear about them because they aren't causing accidents and flipping cars.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

When I was a teenager, some schoolmates of mine crashed their car right in front of my house while coming home drunk from a party. A kid I had gone to elementary school with (a real nice guy) was thrown from the vehicle and run over by it, which killed him. I was home at the time but didn't hear about it until the next school day.

Of course, the event didn't stop me from driving drunk like an idiot on several occasions. I'm just lucky I managed to survive being a teen.

 

[Danny R]

Well, from the latest news report I read, the kids were 17 and 18. Also the wreck occured just around midnight, if not slightly before. I believe the driver was 18, so license and curfue restrictions don't apply.

The party was a BYOB type.

Talking to neighbors who saw the thing, no animal ran in front of them. They were simply driving way too fast, and were likely drunk as well. From the skid marks, its obvious they swerved to the left, and then way overcompensated by swerving back to the right, all while slamming on the brakes. Without a ramp, there isn't a better recipe for flipping an SUV that I know of.

 

[Shawn C]

There's no way my 17 or 18 year old kid is going to be driving around in a Chevy Tahoe that he can pile 5 or 6 friends into.
He is going to get the smallest shitbox I can find with a maximum speed of about 70 MPH or so. Hey, it worked for me. The first two cars I drove were a Chevy Sprint and a Ford Escort PONY.

 

[Chet_F]

"He is going to get the smallest shitbox I can find with a maximum speed of about 70 MPH or so. Hey, it worked for me. The first two cars I drove were a Chevy Sprint and a Ford Escort PONY."

Excellent idea and the same thing I would do put in your situation. My first car maybe went 75 downhill. I knwo for a fact if I would have had a Tahoe or similar vehicle I would have been in considerable trouble. Put your child in a car where they have limited ways of getting into trouble i.e. a slow car or none SUV.

P.S. Off topic but Shawn did you here about the current terrorist threat in Las Vegas...it is on MSNBC. Sounds very credible.