Parents should talk about young lives needlessly lost

Spring isn't supposed to be like this.
Spring is a time that has inspired poets to write about warmth and love and the promise of life renewed.
It is not supposed to be about young people dying senseless deaths.
And yet, every spring it happens.
This spring it happened first on a winding road through Mill Creek Park when a car overloaded with teenagers slammed into a stone abutment. Two boys and a girl are dead. The driver and two passengers remain hospitalized. The seventh person in the car has been released from the hospital.
What happened Saturday night is every parent's worst nightmare. And for every parent of a teenage driver or passenger it should serve as an opportunity to remind their teenagers that driving a car -- even riding in one driven by another teenager -- carries certain responsibilities.
The first responsibility is to realize the very cold fact that teenagers are not immortal. They die every day. And more than 40 percent of the deaths of 16- to 19-year-olds are caused by motor vehicle crashes. And in the vast majority of those cases, speed or alcohol or inattention -- or a combination thereof, coupled with a young driver's lack of experience -- caused the accident.
Every teenage driver today takes a prescribed training course. All are told that an automobile has the potential to maim or kill. Many see movies with graphic scenes of mangled vehicles in which young lives were lost.
Lessons missed
And every year, especially when the weather begins to break, when students start looking forward to spring breaks and the final run-up to summer vacation, when seniors start realizing that graduation and a whole new life are only a few months away -- too many teenagers go on rides from which they will never return.
For students at Austintown Fitch and Cardinal Mooney high schools, the immense pain that a single accident can cause is all too real. The classmates of the dead and injured need shoulders to cry on more than lectures right now.
But other parents should take the time to talk to their youngsters about what happened in Mill Creek Park the other night. They should talk in whatever terms work best between them and their children. Appeal to their logic or sensibilities, preach, cajole, threaten, instill fear or invoke the prospect of guilt that the survivors of a traffic accident must feel. Different approaches work in different families. Some parents demand that their children sign a contract in which the young driver acknowledges the dangers of driving and pledges to behave responsibly. (Such contracts are not difficult to find on the Internet; a sample can be found at www.drivertraining.ohio.gov/parentsteens.htm)
Some parents aren't comfortable having such talks with their children. And sometimes, no matter how many talks parents and children have, bad things still happen.
That shouldn't stop any parent and child from taking a few minutes in the next day or two to have a heart-to-heart talk. Parents should then resolve to have the talk again in a few weeks, and then again. However painful such talks may be, all a parent need do is consider the alternative.