cars and teens
there is a story in trib that has been developing these last few days, about these teenagers who wrapped their grand prix around a light pole at hamlin and lake street. there is one sentence that really stands out to me:
It was not clear why the car was traveling so fast.
i'll tell you why it was driving so fast: because there were teenagers in it. has no one ever been a teenager with a drivers' license? these reporters and cops and parents make it seem like they fell out of the sky at the age of 30, already knowing everything they'll ever need to know. they always seem so surprised when things like this happen.
well, i remember being a teenager with my drivers' license. (mom, if you're reading this, i suggest you avert your eyes, although i got my lead foot from you.) let me tell you a little story. my friends and i had a little thing we liked to call "flying." amy lived in a neighborhood with little hills and whatnot. there was this one stretch of road (i think it was kenilworth) that went up into a considerable hill and then dropped out. the key was to build up a lot of speed and launch your car (be it a taurus or a toyota or a cavilier) over this hill. if you did it right, you'd clear some air under your car and come crashing down. you know you succeeded if you heard the crunch of plastic or metal on the asphalt below. (i have no idea why we always needed shocks in our car. honest.)
this might not sound too dangerous, but there was a catch: a stop sign about 75-100 feet from where your car (flying at about 50 mph) would potentially land. this means that you'd have to stand on your brakes as soon as you hit pavement and hope that either 1.) you could stop in time or 2.) there was no one at the stop sign, about to turn in your path. also, there were a lot of kids in this neighborhood. if i'm not mistaken, there was a youngster playing not too far away from where we were flying one day. of course, that scare wasn't enough to get us to stop flying.
this is the teenage mentality.
i won't bore you with my many speeding tickets and my road trips back and forth from college (where a trip should take 4.5 hours and i would do it 3. i used to wait about an hour after i got home to call my mom to tell i got home all right (sorry, mom)). i have also lost control of my car and have wound up in a ditch. i have crashed into cars that were parked at the bottom of my driveway because i didn't look in my rearview mirror. and i was considered a pretty good driver, for being 16-17.
the problem with the teenage mind is that they've never had the opportunity to go THAT FAST under their own power. these are people with season tickets to great america and no concept of death or mortality. so why not give them to keys to 2 tons of steel that has the capability to go 100 mph? (i also won't tell you about the time my first boyfriend got his parent's cougar over 100 mph on route 53. he had had his license for about 3 or 4 months at this point).
THAT is what those teenagers were doing. they were driving THAT FAST because they could. not many adults can understand that concept anymore. and on a deserted street like lake on a sunday night, i probably would have done the same thing. and with a packed car (like an audience), the driver was probably being cheered on, until something in the road hit his wheel or he swerved to avoid it.
it cost him his life. it's a lesson he'll never get to learn from. and other teenagers probably won't, either.
It was not clear why the car was traveling so fast.
i'll tell you why it was driving so fast: because there were teenagers in it. has no one ever been a teenager with a drivers' license? these reporters and cops and parents make it seem like they fell out of the sky at the age of 30, already knowing everything they'll ever need to know. they always seem so surprised when things like this happen.
well, i remember being a teenager with my drivers' license. (mom, if you're reading this, i suggest you avert your eyes, although i got my lead foot from you.) let me tell you a little story. my friends and i had a little thing we liked to call "flying." amy lived in a neighborhood with little hills and whatnot. there was this one stretch of road (i think it was kenilworth) that went up into a considerable hill and then dropped out. the key was to build up a lot of speed and launch your car (be it a taurus or a toyota or a cavilier) over this hill. if you did it right, you'd clear some air under your car and come crashing down. you know you succeeded if you heard the crunch of plastic or metal on the asphalt below. (i have no idea why we always needed shocks in our car. honest.)
this might not sound too dangerous, but there was a catch: a stop sign about 75-100 feet from where your car (flying at about 50 mph) would potentially land. this means that you'd have to stand on your brakes as soon as you hit pavement and hope that either 1.) you could stop in time or 2.) there was no one at the stop sign, about to turn in your path. also, there were a lot of kids in this neighborhood. if i'm not mistaken, there was a youngster playing not too far away from where we were flying one day. of course, that scare wasn't enough to get us to stop flying.
this is the teenage mentality.
i won't bore you with my many speeding tickets and my road trips back and forth from college (where a trip should take 4.5 hours and i would do it 3. i used to wait about an hour after i got home to call my mom to tell i got home all right (sorry, mom)). i have also lost control of my car and have wound up in a ditch. i have crashed into cars that were parked at the bottom of my driveway because i didn't look in my rearview mirror. and i was considered a pretty good driver, for being 16-17.
the problem with the teenage mind is that they've never had the opportunity to go THAT FAST under their own power. these are people with season tickets to great america and no concept of death or mortality. so why not give them to keys to 2 tons of steel that has the capability to go 100 mph? (i also won't tell you about the time my first boyfriend got his parent's cougar over 100 mph on route 53. he had had his license for about 3 or 4 months at this point).
THAT is what those teenagers were doing. they were driving THAT FAST because they could. not many adults can understand that concept anymore. and on a deserted street like lake on a sunday night, i probably would have done the same thing. and with a packed car (like an audience), the driver was probably being cheered on, until something in the road hit his wheel or he swerved to avoid it.
it cost him his life. it's a lesson he'll never get to learn from. and other teenagers probably won't, either.
posted by mikraas at 8:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home