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November Was Deadly for Area Teens

While incidents of teen traffic fatalities are sadly commonplace anywhere, the numbers have skyrocketed over the past few weeks. What compounds these tragedies are the fact that it never seems to be one teen that loses his or her life in a crash, but multiple teens.

ROCKVILLE, Md. (WUSA) -- Students from another high school are learning the lessons in life not found in any text books.

Oswalvo Rosales and Ricardo Orellana, both 16 years old, were students at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville. Nineteen year old Jose Gomez, a senior, was behind the wheel. All were riding in a Nissan Altima Monday afternoon when Gomez lost control of the car and slammed into a tree.

Police say there are no signs of drugs or alcohol. The car was traveling on the narrow, curvy Avery Road in Rockville when the crash happened around 4:00 in the afternoon.

Washington Post

Thursday, November 29, 2007; A 15-year-old honor roll student died in a car crash on the way to school yesterday morning, becoming the sixth teenager in the past month to perish on the roads of semi-rural Charles County.

Stephanie Weir, a sophomore at Thomas Stone High School, was in the front passenger seat of a 2002 Chevrolet Cavalier that slammed into a tree, a wreck that left two other teens injured, one seriously.
"She was one of those kids who you knew was going to go do something fantastic," said Weir's ice hockey coach, Andy Parker. "Incredibly smart. . . . A coach's dream.”

Washington Post

Sunday, November 18, 2007; As friends and relatives took turns sharing their favorite memories of Tavonne Alston at his funeral Friday, the same one kept coming up: his huge smile.

"I see that smile every time I close my eyes," said his mother, Elaine Alston-Hill. "He had the biggest smile."
Alston's service at Union Bethel A.M.E. Church in Brandywine was the last of four funerals in less than a week, following a Nov. 6 car accident that killed him and three of his La Plata High School friends. The group was headed home after a pickup basketball game in preparation for school team tryouts when their car swerved into the path of a sport-utility vehicle. Alston died at the scene of the crash.

The first funeral took place Nov. 10, for Donte Segar, 14. On Monday, there were back-to-back services for Jonathan Chapman, 16, and Dionnte Swinson, 15. A fifth student riding in the car, Markus Allen, 17, survived the crash and was hospitalized.

The reasons for these accidents all seem to be the result of reckless behavior on behalf of the drivers. Why they have all happened in such a cluster is beyond explanation.

But when you consider that our teens are so used to multitasking, then perhaps these accidents don’t seem so random.

Teenagers and young adults these days have more communication and entertainment options than at any other time in history. They think nothing of instant messaging their friends while they surf the net or work on school projects. They can instantly contact anyone of their friends with a cell phone, either by calling them or texting them. Juggling several tasks at once is standard operating procedure for anyone born after 1985. And unfortunately, it seems that they are multitasking while they are behind the wheel of a car.

In an article in the Washington Post, one young woman talks about her propensity for text messages while driving:

She cites attitudes toward safety belts as one of several risk behaviors she sees in herself and other young drivers she knows, including a propensity to dance along to CDs and to text-message on cellphones while at the steering wheel of a moving vehicle.

"I'm not kidding," she said. "I ran into my garage door three or four times because I was text-messaging. I had to pay for them all, too, and it was expensive."

They are also viewing seatbelts as an option rather than as a necessity. According to the same article in the Post, only seven of the ten victims over the past two weeks were wearing seatbelts.

While there is no way to end all car accidents, surely a re-examination of how we teach our children to drive could possibly lower the casualty rate. While the act of driving has remained essentially the same since the invention of the Model T, the distractions available to drivers have grown exponentially. Perhaps driver safety classes should re-emphasize the importance of both seatbelts for drivers and passengers, as well as using common sense when behind the wheel of a car. Maybe stiffer penalties for teenagers caught driving while using a cell phone could be a consideration. A teenager who knows that he or she could lose his license for six months would perhaps think twice before using a cell phone for idle chat while moving at 60 miles an hour.

With almost a dozen dead teenagers come almost a dozen families, with mothers and fathers who will never see their children graduate, go to college, get married, or start families of their own.

As personal injury attorneys, we see our share of clients that have had their lives drastically and irrevocably altered due to circumstances beyond their control. Quite often, our cases involve tragedies that could have been prevented had someone simply exercised caution and common sense. We can’t help but wonder whether or not the body count here would be lower if all the passengers were wearing seatbelts and nobody was talking on their cell phones.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact our offices for a free legal consultation today.

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Washington, DC 20005

Phone: 202-296-0666

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