Teen drivers get gruesome lesson

The six volunteers learned some grim statistics but also some helpful tactics.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published July 27, 2007

Pasco and Hillsborough high school students attend a class in driving skills given by the Pasco Sheriff's Office at Land O'Lakes High on Thursday.
	[Mike Pease | Times]

LAND O'LAKES - The six local teens who signed up for this week's driving class arrived Thursday afternoon at Land O'Lakes High School and were greeted with this message on the screen in the front of the room:

"You are more likely to be killed in an automobile crash than any other way."

They were shown a video of a bunch of kids their age in a car, riding around, laughing and talking and joking - and then getting hit from the front, and then from the back, and getting thrown around and bloodied by broken glass. The clip ended with three of the kids in body bags.

They also watched a video of a man in a maroon SUV swerve across a highway median and flip over and get thrown out of the window rag-doll-style and then get hit by an oncoming car.

Everybody in the room cringed and groaned.

"This," said Cpl. Dan Olds of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, "is a very important thing."

The free two-day Teen Driver Challenge is a new state-funded program for 16- and 17-year-olds run by the Florida Sheriff's Association. Thursday was classroom lessons. Today's schedule brings on-the-road driving exercises.

Car wrecks are the country's No. 1 killer of teens. Every year, 5,000 to 6,000 teens die in wrecks, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - a figure that adds up to almost 60,000 teens from 1994 to 2003.

Teens are more likely to get into wrecks than any other group of drivers.

They're also more likely to die in those wrecks.

Florida, Olds told them, is No. 3 in the nation for fatal teen wrecks.

And this area in particular has had far more than its fair share of late.

Wesley Chapel High grad Tiffany Evans hit a school bus and died on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard last September. Pine View Middle School student Krista Sellars was killed on U.S. 41 in January. Land O'Lakes High student Michelle Castle was killed near Crystal River in May.

In class on Thursday were: Christian Siena, 16, from Gulf High; Victor Alexander, 16, from Land O'Lakes High; Dustin Shrodes, 17, from Wesley Chapel High; Chelsey Abrego, 16, from Land O'Lakes High; Nick Wine, 16, from River Ridge High; and Chrissy Castriota, 17, from Berkeley Prep in Town 'N Country.

Olds started by showing them a collage of roadside memorials and yearbook pictures of some local teens who have died in wrecks. He told them to drive safe, pay attention, be mature, and taught them how to avoid hydroplaning and how to get out of it if and when it does happen.

He gave them a long list of do's and don'ts.

Mostly don'ts.

Two hands: good.

One hand: bad.

Eating while driving, putting on makeup, talking on the phone, text-messaging, tailgating, cutting people off, making hand gestures, wearing flip flops: bad, bad, bad.

He even went over Newton's laws of motion.

The first law: Every body continues in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless physical forces compel it to change that state.

The second law: The acceleration of a body is directly proportional to the net force acting on that body and inversely proportional to the mass of the body.

The point: Car wrecks are serious. So is doing everything to stay out of them.

Then Cpl. Julie Satre from the Sheriff's Office told the teens a personal story.

She said she had just one daughter. In 1999, her daughter was T-boned, she wasn't wearing her seat belt, and she was thrown from her pickup and then had the pickup land on her. She was 28. Satre got the phone call at 2 a.m.

The teens in the room were sitting still and paying close attention.

"Wear your seat belt," Satre told them. "Your folks do not want that phone call."

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 813 909-4617.

[Last modified July 26, 2007, 21:59:27]