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National Teen Driver Safety Week
10/21/09 - 04:46 PM
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This week is National Teen Driver Safety Week. The state of Florida wants to draw attention to statistics that name vehicle crashes as the main cause of teen fatalities nationwide.

Amy…Panama City Police respond to thousands of crashes per year.  This year police say that they’re expecting to respond to more crashes than the past 5 years combined…for the entire Bay County area.  Teens in Panama City say that learning how to drive is a tough part of growing up: “The biggest challenge is the distractions,” says Alex Masso of Bay High.  Miles Godwin thinks it’s “…paying attention to the road.”

Driving is something most teens look forward to, but according to statistics many teens take don’t the responsibility that comes with driving seriously.

Sgt Jeff Becker of the Panama City Police Department says that “…approximately 400 out of every 10,000 drivers is a teen between the age of 15 and 19 will be involved in a traffic crash.”

Even students say that teens sometimes think they’re invincible.  Bay High School’s student body president, Miles Godwin, recounts a scary experience from his sophomore year:  “…when another person was driving he was texting and he actually t-boned us right here behind Bay High School and he was going 45 miles per hour.  It was very scary. One of my friends got injured, but we were all alright.”

But not all teens involved in crashes end up alright.  According to statistics 4,054 teens died in car crashes last year. The number one reason used to be alcohol.  Now it’s distractions…like friends in the car or texting.

Dee Cassidy owns Bay County Traffic School.  She’s gotten some interesting confessions from teens:  “I’ve had teenagers say ‘I can eat my breakfast burrito and put on my eye makeup and talk to my friend on the phone and drive with my knee all at the same time and I’m like…waaah! That’s not good!”

Alex Masso admits that distractions come from “Also having friends in the car and having music loud. It’s difficult to pay attention to the road and also deal with everything going on in the car.”

Cassidy says that teens need to remember that “Driving today is not a right. You don’t have a right to drive. It is a privilege and they will take that away from you so quickly when things go wrong. And things can go wrong in a split second.”