Tragedy turned stupid

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

There was a bad car accident locally last week. A car lost control on a country road, went into the ditch, and hit a large tree. Two passengers, a boy and a girl, both sophomores at the local high school, were killed. The local newspaper has been full of stories about how the victims are being remembered by their friends, and pictures of the roadside memorial that's been set up at the crash site.

It now turns out this accident was about the most preventable one possible. It has since been revealed:

-The boy and the girl who died were both runaways (not that this means anything)
-The car involved in the accident was stolen from the boy's parents, who didn't know their car was gone until they were told of the accident
-The driver of the car, who suffered minor injuries, was in another accident last weekend in which the boy killed in the later crash was a passenger. In that accident, the car hit a metal sewer something-or-other at 60 to 70 MPH.
-Nobody in the car was wearing a seat belt in this first accident.
-As a result, a female passenger in the front hit her head on the dashboard so hard, she was knocked out cold. So the people in the car decided to LAY HER OUT ON THE SIDEWALK and drive away. The girl said she was unconscious for about two hours.
-She also said the driver had had six shots of blue vodka before driving the car and was so intoxicated he couldn't walk a straight line.

There's no evidence the driver was drunk in the second, fatal crash, but I think it may be likely. I also think it's likely nobody was wearing their seatbelts in the second crash either.

Moral of this sad tale:

1. Always wear your seatbelt, and
2. Don't drink and drive.

[blas]

There was a huge story here back in December of a handfull of teens (only one old enough to drive and wasn't the driver, the rest were 13-15 years old) who took a car joy riding on this notorious country road hill where, if you go past enough, you're able to catch a lot of air and do a Dukes of Hazard-like stunt.

You can see where this could go terribly wrong.

All but two of them died, if I remember right.

[Kal]

Similar thing happened with my wife's family about a year ago. A car filled with six drunk, male teenagers is never a good thing and the driver managed to run the car off the road and into a tree. Two survived out of the six as they were thrown through the windscreen, suffering severe head injuries but avoiding the tree or car interior. The others were apparently killed by the various things they impacted on.
Needless to say the families all rallied around each other... No, not so much. Despite the close friendships between the kids there was much suing and the drivers family came off worst.

[MoonCat]

Very preventabe, and very, very sad.

[Food Lady]

I heard about that. I didn't know about the first crash. Wow.

[Chromatix]

Another moral: if you so nearly got killed by someone's driving less than a week ago, it's a bad idea to be a passenger in his car again, especially under such dubious circumstances as described. I have to assume that the girl also knew about this, so it actually qualifies as a Darwin Award.

[Shalom]

You know, I was looking for the story on gargle news, and the keywords I chose brought up another accident in Chevy Chase, MD, that was eerily similar to the one you described, except for the back seat passengers both being boys.

News article says the front seat passenger was well enough to talk to his mother, who

spoke to him in the hospital. "He was crying, he said he was sorry.... I said 'you have to stop stealing cars,' and he said. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry ma.'

He's sorry, is it? Lotta good that does his friends. Sounds like he's been doing this a while, and his mother knew about it too.

[MournBlade]

Some people are terminally stupid - trajic that they usually end up ok and kill the people around them.

[LillFilly]

With all these preventable car crashes involving teens, that's why my state passed a graduated license law for them. Can't have any underage passengers for a certain number of months after getting your license, then only so many for another length of time, but not after dark, until you've driven long enough to gain experience. So sad what one stupid moment can do.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

With all these preventable car crashes involving teens, that's why my state passed a graduated license law for them. Can't have any underage passengers for a certain number of months after getting your license, then only so many for another length of time, but not after dark, until you've driven long enough to gain experience. So sad what one stupid moment can do.

We've had a graduated licensing system in place for at least a decade and I can't see where it helps much on preventing fatal accidents.

Every so often we'll hear of one somewhere in our area where several teens are piled up in a car and several of them (if not all) end up dead.

[Kogarashi]

We've had a graduated licensing system in place for at least a decade and I can't see where it helps much on preventing fatal accidents.

Every so often we'll hear of one somewhere in our area where several teens are piled up in a car and several of them (if not all) end up dead.

Exactly. Sad to say, even graduated licenses won't necessarily stop the really stupid, reckless ones from breaking the rules and paying the price. After all, in the OP, the accidents involved stolen cars and possibly unlicensed drivers, not to mention alcohol. And I knew plenty of people in my high school who'd bend the rules about who could drive when and with whom if it suited them, since the cops wouldn't know unless they got pulled over.

[mikoyan29]

A couple years ago there was an accident where a carload of teens was killed by a train. So first Amtrak shows the cab footage where you can clearly see the gates down and can hear the horn. You also hear the engineer engaging the dynamic brakes (not that it really helped). A little bit later they had footage from a local business where the car in question pulled around cars stopped for the train.

[MadMike]

A couple years ago, shortly after the start of the school year, someone crashed a SUV just down the street from my house. It turned out to be a 16-year-old kid who had his permit, but not his license, and took his parents' car for a joyride. He was travelling at a high rate of speed and was killed.

My son had been friends with the kid in the past, but they had kind of drifted apart when the other kid started messing around with drugs. While there was no mention of this in the paper, my son was pretty certain that he was on something when he wrecked. Even though he and my son weren't exactly close anymore, my son took it pretty hard. He and many other students wanted to go to the funeral, but the school didn't want to let them. They finally gave in when pretty much the entire class threatened to walk out of school and go anyway.

[PepperElf]

1. Always wear your seatbelt, and
2. Don't drink and drive.

especially when your driver has a personal history of driving drunk and crashing into things... not to mention a personal history of ABANDONING injured passengers.


My feelings on the passengers are very mixed. I do not consider them complete victims. Yes the driver IS to blame because, if you're driving you HAVE to accept responsibility for the lives & safety of your passengers. BUT to get into the car in the first place, KNOWING what they do about the driver... that's downright DUMB.

It's a shame they had to die before they figured this out.

And it's a shame the driver had to be the classic "keep on doing it until someone dies" kind of drunk driver.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I am now hearing that:

1. the driver was drunk in the fatal accident,
2. the car was being chased by the cops, and
3. the car hit the ditch and the tree at about 100 mph.

None of this is being reported in the news, as it could be controversial. It just adds even more WTF to the situation.