It’s the title of a famous piece on King Lear, but also pertains to the story of the just-graduated high school cheerleaders, who, perhaps because the driver of the car going to the summer home of one of the girls’ parents, distracted by a text message from the following vehicle, crashed headlong into a truck and died. Of course we know what will be said of this, with some truth: they were young, white, probably attractive women, which is why the media will cover the story. But the horrors won’t stop there, because people who despise the fact that they are young and beautiful and privileged, and, horrifyingly, cheerleaders, can be expected to express a lot of vile sentiments over the intartubes.
Bet on it.
UPDATE: some of the love that I knew would be coming can be viewed in the comments here, especially those of “swivel” who has geometric proof that God does not exist
put me in the natural selection camp. Mostly though it’s cause I think of this a lot – if someone calls me when they’re driving I cut the call short as quick as I can. They always say “it’s ok I got the hands-free thing.” And I think yes but you’re the person who forgot his windows password the week you got your new computer – don’t get cocky brother.
Hey, let’s be careful out there.
Text messaging is much more distracting than a phone call. It not only takes your eyes off the road, but to some degree your hands as well. It is a tragedy that they died, especially since it was 100% avoidable.
There’s a world of difference in text-messaging and simple conversation. You can’t look at the road and a dot-matrix text message at the same time.
Agreed, happyfeet, Darwin’s Principle is at work, as it always will be, as long as people continue to be biologically-based protoplasmic reproduction machines. After that, it’s strictly spiritual….
My son won’t be allowed to have teen passengers until he’s 18, and til then he has to listen to all my cautionary tales. I shudder at how blithely I nearly steered myself and my companions towards doom…on multiple occasions. I was the most sensible and reserved of all my pals, but that’s still on the scale of giddy girl sense.
A Giddy idiot surrounded by giddy idiots trying to distract the first giddy idiot…buckle up, folks.
TW:
consider harlots
I live less than an hour away from where this accident happened. It made local headlines for the first three days after the accident. I have to admit, I was surprised when I first saw an article about it on Fox News, I didn’t particularly think that it was necessarily national news. But I think that one of the reasons the story is getting so much play is because of how young they were. Much of the local coverage has been treating it as a cautionary tale for teenage drivers.
Unfortunately the more tragic aspects of the accident is being overlooked in the national coverage. The driver of the SUV was passing a car and after she made the pass somehow swerved into oncoming traffic, proving that she had no control of her vehicle (texting or not). She went head on into a trailer. Early reports said the driver of the trailer, was physically unhurt, and attempted to rescue the 5 girls from the SUV, only to be prevented the fire. He will be haunted by this for the rest of his life. And so will the four girls following behind their friends on the way to the summer home. You can hear an early audio report here
Incidentally, it was initially reported that the driver only had a junior driver’s license, which made it illegal for her to drive after 9pm and with more than 2 other teenagers in the car, but her parents released documents showing she had taken a driver’s ed course, allowing her to have a full license at the age of 17.
Since I’m one of the people Collins is stupidly stereotyping in the above post, I thought I’d paste in my actual comment about the accident from my blog in case anyone wants to check.
My Not-So-Secret Fear. I was reminded of my biggest fear in life by a Fox story on five young women who were killed in a car accident outside Fairport, NY near Rochester. That crash was sensational enough to make the national news, but at least one high school student dies in a car wreck every year in my home county in Kentucky. Four of my nieces and nephews in Morehead went through high school in the last ten years and their parents refrigerator was once filled with pictures from the funerals of their friends and acquaintances.
I haven’t seen a lot of statistics but it seems like there’s more teen deaths on highways now than there was in the early seventies. I only remember one teenager dying from a car accident in my home town of Waverly, NY during my three years of high school (her car fell down a steep embankment while she was approaching her parent’s driveway). However, my mother claims that there’s now a lot more driving deaths there now as well.
I blame it on better cars. Teen-age drivers aren’t any dumber than they were when I was a teen driver. My friends and I were pretty dumb anyway. And the roads haven’t changed much. Country roads and rural highways are still narrow and windy. However, the cars handle better than they used to and I believe that gives dumb teen-age drivers more wrong-headed confidence which unfortunately tends to get them killed.
Anyway, it’s getting close to the day when it’s my turn to worry. My oldest daughter will be thirteen on Aug. 1. That puts her three years away from her drivers license and I worry a lot more about her and her friends driving than I worry about drugs, alcohol, sex, or boys–or other girls for that matter.
There’s not much I can do about it except talk to her about safe driving (which I do already). Otherwise, it’s just one of those things you have to live with.
It is sad and for some unknown reason in my neck of the woods every year we seem to lose some young people around HS graduation time in traffic accidents.
Ric–believe it or not, this isn’t about you.
We just haven’t evolved with this stuff to the point where phone usage and stuff can be completely exonerated in any accident that happens to you when you’ve got some device in play. You’ll always have some doubt that maybe things would have unfolded differently. You see this on tv where the one person says “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself.” And then there’s a close-up on visage with pained doubt and hold it and hold it and cut.
A few days back, Ric wrote a post suggesting the my encounter with him (re: “weenie men”) is why I was taking a break from posting.
Evidently where most people pour milk on their breakfast cereal, Ric pours self-regard.
Unfortunate, unsurprising and tragic for the families. I’m in the “not news” camp.
Teenagers kill themselves in cars for many reasons, though – drunk, horny, angry, stupid… Texting? What’s one more reason?
Count me in on the side of the fence that made glib statements. I think, of course, this event was horrific and tragic, and I wish it hadn’t occurred. Yeah, Darwinism. Kids that age have no sense of their own mortality. Actually, a lot of them simply have no sense, in general. Self-indulgent and spoiled, they’ve been sheltered from facing consequences for their actions, so why should they think they could ever reach the ends of their tethers?
re: “A few days back, Ric wrote a post suggesting the my encounter with him (re: “weenie menâ€Â) is why I was taking a break from posting.”
It was a joke.
HALP US RICE CARROT – WE R TO LITRUL TO UNNERSTAND
While the deaths of teenagers if tragic (given the potential snuffed out), the idiocy of mixing phones and driving is hardly limited to them.
The other day, during my commute on a major interstate, suddenly, several cars nearly piled into each other. An SUV up ahead had suddenly slowed down, and folks were swerving out of the way to avoid rear-ending it.
As I pulled alongside this person (in the middle left lane of a four-lane highway), it turns out that it was a middle-aged male driver, busy WRITING, while on the cell-phone, while driving. My guess? He’d gotten a call and decided to grab a pen and paper while driving and taking the call. Or maybe he was asking directions.
And had potentially just caused a four-car pile-up.
As least I send presents with my lame jokes that I hope aren’t too creepy.
A story about promising young lives cut short by tragic, spectacular fiery accidents that unfold right in front of people, including people who love them, and could affect any decent, law-abiding family…will always be news.
Is there anyone here who didn’t have friends, or at least classmates, in high school who were killed in stupid accidents? In my case (god, 20 years ago) it was 2 guys who were playing chicken, on motorcycles, in the middle of the night, with no headlights and no helmets. Darwinism of course, but still, it is sad people so young were either not formed with the proper guidance and love to make common sense decisions, or chose to ignore that guidance.
From what I’ve seen, Ric, everything you write is a joke.
Well, Rubber Goose, in my case it was forty years — forty-two, in fact, to the month and almost to the day.
Summer vacation. The class that was soon to be Seniors had a party and picnic at a nearby State Park. This was the Sixties — no alcohol, chaperones, just sodas, swimming, and general fun.
On the way back home, the guy who was generally expected to be class valedictorian loaded up three other guys and their girl friends. Yes, folks, eight teenagers in a ’56 Chevy four-door painted pale green, with a mighty Stove Bolt six-cylinder and three on the tree. It was only about ten miles; it was daylight; it was a good road. What could go wrong?
What could go wrong was a pipe truck with a bad engine, parked beside the road on a gravel section that was part of what had been the parking lot of a drive-in five or so years before. The driver had gotten it clear of the pavement, but not by much, and this was long before four-way flashers. He had just gotten out of the truck and was rummaging for flares when the Chevy came up — and ran straight into the back.
This was, as I say, a load of oilfield pipe, six-inch steel cylinders stacked a bit irregularly instead of having all the ends neatly squared off. The heights of truck and car put the lowest layer of pipe at just about head level.
Three of the kids were killed instantly, including one girl in the back seat who was beheaded by an especially long pipe. Two others were injured badly enough that they never recovered, including one cousin of mine who suffered a brain injury that made a noticeable dip in his IQ.
No cell phones were damaged in any way.
Beware of bogeymen — they won’t hurt you, but the people loudly pointing them out are f*ing dangerous. And don’t try to teach your kids, or anybody else, about specific dangers. Anything — including soft kisses from your SO — that takes your attention away from the road, the car, and the other vehicles is attempted murder and/or suicide.
Regards,
Ric
I remember being young and bulletproof. Caution often comes from lessons learned the hard way.
There have been several TV expose’s on distracted teens driving dangerously in the past year. One show had mounted cameras in various teens cars with the knowledge and consent of the parents and teenage drivers. The kids were shown reaching down to pick up dropped phones and going off the road, texting and doing the usual stupid teenager tricks.
TW – pass concerning
that’s kinda creepy.
I disagree that it is the cars. In my day we had muscle cars that were alot more powerful than todays 4 banger small cars and there weren’t a rash of teen car deaths. What we didn’t have was cell phones, blackberries and texting.
It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.
Driving while using a cell phone is already illegal in NY State. I still see it every day.
The death toll from this accident was a little higher than normal, but this is not unusual. I’d bet there are at least two or three accidents in this area every year where teen drivers manage to kill themselves and at least one passenger. There was one quite recently that killed three high school kids at lunch time and it didn’t make the national news.
Without a hands free setup, that is. As if that matters.
Two close friends and a brother, all three of which died in single vehicle accidents directly attributable to drinking and driving, way back when cordless phones were still a few years in the future.
One of the friends was driving impaired so fast that when she left the road, she Left The Road – and didn’t touch down again for 114 feet. That one was a closed casket ceremony.
I’m not getting all the Darwinist talk. Is there a gene that lets some people skip adolescence?
Cardinals relief pitcher Josh Hancock was either texting or talking on his cell phone when he ran into the back of a flatbed tow truck (with its flashers on, I might add). Of course, Hancock was also plastered from a night of drinking, was speeding and wasn’t wearing his seat belt.
Physics, the great equalizer…
Two years ago two of my daughters were hit by a car while the guy was text messaging. They were at a stop light when he blew through the intersection, hit another car and richoceted into them!
ARE there really “more” teen deaths via car accidents? Or are we more aware of them via media? Or maybe it is higher because the percentage of teens driving full time (their ‘own’ cars vs driving mom’s piece of junk on occasion) is higher?
My friend died in 2005 when a teen driver in an SUV with a car full of others drifted off the road, overcorrected and slammed headon into my friend’s car.
Alstate Insurance runs a simple but chilling tv ad showing a long caravan of cars driving off into the dusk filled with laughing teens, some in prom clothes, some just casually dressed — the last car passes with an innocent face looking out the back straight at the camera — while the narrator intones “Each year approximately six thousand teens go out for a drive and never come back.”
I swear, we are going to bribe the twins when they reach driving age NOT to drive or get a license until after they graduate high school ….
I didn’t drive until I was twenty. Oh, I took driver’s ed, but I refused to actually drive on my own until I had to in order to get a decent job. (The public transportation system in Miami in the early 80s sucked.) I somehow knew that when I was in high school I didn’t have the mental concentration needed to navigate a car through the streets of the city I lived in. The fact that it was Miami, even (cough) years ago famous for the insanity of its roadways, helped.
I have two nieces, one who’s been driving for a few years and one who just got her license. The elder one is absolutely brilliant with a depth unmatched by any of her peers. But she lacks situational awareness and seeing her get behind the wheel is always a fear inducing experience for my sister. The younger one, on the other hand, while also very bright, is far more grounded, and she’s all over the driving thing. No worries there.
The elder sibling will likely learn her lessons by bouncing off of a few more things, at low speed, God willing.
The scariest part is that I’m on the road with these skanks. My child won’t drive until she can pay her own insurance, and take a driver’s safety class.
My son won’t be allowed to have teen passengers until he’s 18, and til then he has to listen to all my cautionary tales. I shudder at how blithely I nearly steered myself and my companions towards doom…on multiple occasions.
Sorry – let’s try again.
My son won’t be allowed to have teen passengers until he’s 18, and til then he has to listen to all my cautionary tales. I shudder at how blithely I nearly steered myself and my companions towards doom…on multiple occasions.
And yet you’re still here to tell about it. You had to deal with adversity, and you handled it and learned from it. Parents nowadays don’t seem to want the same for their own kids, which is a shame.
Is this where we’ve gone now? Kids getting killed in accidents is nothing new, and isn’t happening in higher rates than it did 20-40 years ago. Unfortunately, since we now have 24-7 news channels, they have to fill the time with something, so why not show stuff that gets ratings, like pretty girls getting killed in accidents?
Unfortunately, parents watch this stuff, overreact, and keep their kids from letting them do anything that might let them take any chances. So when they actually become adults, they haven’t learned how to deal with adversity. Look at the average school playground nowadays – nothing that can cause any injury.
What’s going to happen in the next generation? Are kids not going to be able to leave the house until they’re 25?
A very slippery slope indeed.
TV (Harry)
Self-indulgent and spoiled, they’ve been sheltered from facing consequences for their actions, so why should they think they could ever reach the ends of their tethers?
Therein lies the rub. By NOT letting them face any actions from which they may suffer consequences adds to the problem.
Law of unintended consequences.
TV (Harry)
Harry, I take it your premise is that driving dangerously is a requisite to ever driving responsibly? Maybe its unfair, all the other teenagers in the world get to drive in cars filled to clown capacity – not my kid.
I didn’t learn, as you suggest, in real time from my errors. I fluffed them off then; blithely, was the word I think I used….
Plus, my kid has a central visual defect that makes it very prudent to keep distractions to a minimum in the beginning. My rules or no license before 18.
BECAUSE OF THE INSURANCE!
Darleen:
You’re asking precisely the right questions. IIRC, the calculations for motor vehicle accidents is not simply raw numbers (although that’s available), but fatalities per passenger-miles driven. (A similar calculation is made for airline safety—it’s fatalities per passenger-miles, not simply fatalities.)
The teenager who has access to a car has gone up—years ago, when families had only one car, the prospect of junior or junioress having access to the car on anything other than a rare occasion was minute. Today, kids’ cars are often seen as necessary, if only b/c they’re working jobs after school that may require transportation. Or, to put it differently, fifty years ago, one-car families were the norm, even for the nuclear family of Dad, Mum, and the two kids. Today, two-car families are the norm where there’s no kids—and the numbers go up w/ the number of children.
To suggest, then, that there are somehow disproportionately more deaths is problematic, unless one can show that the number of incidents per teenage-miles has gone up.
Inspector
The thing is, many parents live in areas where driving conditions –traffic, aggressiveness — has gotten much much worse.
when I was a kid, So Cal drivers were considered among the politest in the country.
Now our traffic is the worse (thank YOU ex-gov Moonbeam) and the drivers amoung the lousiest and with the worst tempers.
Sending a 16 y/o out into that mix is not so much letting a teen face adversity but playing Russian roulette where the gun is others driving Hummers, Escalades, Tahoes, and huge, modified pickups.
SarahW,
I didn’t mean to use your situation in particular – your comment just struck me as a microcosm of what I think is going on in the country. Obviously, I don’t know all of the facts about your child. I apologize if you thought I was singling you out.
That said, my main premise stands – if each generation of parents is more protective than the prior generation, what happens 4,5, maybe 6 generations down? Will we have a society where anything that requires one to take chances (sports, riding a motorcycle, etc.) is made illegal? Our current nanny-statist political climate is a step in that direction. My playground example, cities requiring people to wear helmets riding a bicycle, etc.
That’s what I’m reacting to, as a whole. The media creates a problem, parents overreact, politicians make more laws, we all lose precious freedoms. Even the freedom to make mistakes. The premise of the post had to do with the girl supposedly text messaging. You know there’s going to be a politician with a great idea for a law about that.
JMHO
TV (Harry)
tw: expendi posses? Is that latin?
The thing is, many parents live in areas where driving conditions –traffic, aggressiveness  has gotten much much worse.
This I concur with. My subdivision is surrounded by an expressway, and 3 50 mph multi-lane roads. None of which even have sidewalks. My niece and nephews can’t even leave the subdivision without being driven.
Where I grew up (Detroit – my neighborhood was good until the early 80’s), I could ride my bike from the northeast side all the way to Metro Beach (a 20 mile ride), without ever having to ride along a main road.
I guess I think kids are missing out. Maybe society as a whole has changed – but I don’t necessarily think it’s for the better.
Of course you have it worse – you have Atty Gen Moonbeam.
TV (Harry)
Dan – That swivel is a bit full of himself, no?
You could say that–and it would be litotes.
My business partner is from Fairport. His best friend from high school, a now retired cop, knows those roads well. They suck – bad lines of sight, strange camber/crowns in curves, etc. Two things jump out – first is the texting, which apparently is not illegal, while phoning is (hard to believe that loophole – hope my understanding is wrong), and second is five teens in a car where at least four don’t have duct tape over their mouths.
I wouldn’t look forward to getting my two roadworthy all over again. Simple suggestion for those who are facing that – no other kids in the car, maybe an exception for a single sibling. My car, my rules, even for 18 year olds. Devious way to further disrupt hijinks – make them learn on a manual. Does two things – keeps them more engaged in the driving process and likely blocks some of their friends with dubious driving skills from driving son/daughters’ wheels. I was always happier when my kids were driving than anyone else’s. (Slightly misplaced feeling in my son’s case, though). We also used our own extended driver’s ed (all credit to the wife) – a log book and fifty hours successful drive time with the ‘rents. They don’t get that with so-called driver’s ed. Its a pain, but they are your kids, right?
And to those who see this as Darwinian, I’ll bet there’s not a first responder/EMT amongst you.
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