What can we do to stop teen auto deaths?

Two lives have been changed forever: My friend Ellie Floyd, now deceased, as well as that of the young man, injured and still hospitalized, who was in the car with her.

“Kids.” “Reckless.” “Happens all the time.”

“Another name on the barn.”

These are only a few of the many responses I have heard in the days since last Saturday afternoon when my phone rang, and Ellie’s tearful mom told me about the accident.

No, these were not just two reckless kids.

These were people: friends, family, members of our community, members of the generation just learning its place in the world.

These were two people who, with one terrible lapse in judgment, changed not only their lives, but the lives of all those who knew and loved them.

Who among us has not at one time or another in their life had a similar terrible lapse, but lived to say, “There, but for the grace of God.”

“Old enough to know better.”

I’ve heard that one, too, and that’s right, they were old enough to know better. The trouble is, however, very apparently they didn’t know better. Why? What is it that we, the older members of their community and families, have failed to teach them?

What can we do to teach them to value their own lives as much as their friends and families do?

“We did everything we could do.”

I’ve heard that one, too, and well, no, apparently we didn’t do everything we could do.

How many dead? How many injured?

How many young lives damaged, if not ruined, before we decide we have to do something more?

A teacher from a school in a small town in Massachusetts, very much like Stanwood and with a similar problem, tells me they adopted a policy of parking the smashed-up cars of students’ fatal accidents by the front door of the high school, so that every student, teacher and parent going in and out of the school could not forget.

Not pretty, no, but neither are the dead and injured victims of these accidents.

I thought of having the following quote from NPR’s “Car Talk” painted on the side of the barn:

“[Sixteen], two beers and never gonna die. YeeHaw. . . Delight stops at the ICU or the funeral home - worse when it’s an innocent person who pays the price.” — signed anonymously

“Nothing you can do about it.”

I’ve heard that one, too, and I’m sorry, but I think there must be – I think there has to be — something we can do about it.

As adult friends, as teachers and parents, we are not meeting our responsibilities.

As a community, we are failing.

– Julia Petrakis Camano Island