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Maryann Wyatt set her grief aside last summer and spoke out after her 14-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash in Sandy Springs.
Emily Wyatt had told her mom she was spending the night at a friend's house, but it wasn't true. She went out partying instead, and Emily ended up in a car full of teens. The 17-year-old driver missed a curve at high speed and crashed into a tree. Emily and the driver were killed, and a third child was gravely injured.
Wyatt said parents had to open their eyes to the fact that their children --- even the good ones, like Emily --- were doing dumb and dangerous things. It was time to make a stand and take back their kids, she said.
Her message resonated with parents across metro Atlanta. Several parent groups held meetings on the subject, and Wyatt was invited to talk at forums and at churches. But after a while, the meetings died down and the issue drifted off.
"I don't see a lot of behavior change, even among Emily's friends," Wyatt said. "I don't know that anybody learned a whole lot."
Now, a year later, comes another cluster of teen driving tragedies, as always seems to happen. Four teenagers died in three separate accidents over seven days recently --- a 15-year-old from Gwinnett County, a 17-year-old from Forsyth County and two 16-year-olds from north Fulton County.
The Fulton deaths were particularly chilling for Wyatt, because they involved parties, teens together in a car late at night, drinking (although not necessarily by the driver; those tests are still out), and some parents who knew little or nothing about their children's whereabouts --- all the elements from the Sandy Springs crash a year ago.
But this time there is no anguished mother speaking out. The families are grieving in private, as most do in these circumstances.
And there probably won't be a flurry of new legislation to protect teen drivers.
"We can't legislate anymore," said State Rep. Joe Wilkinson (R-Sandy Springs), who has pushed many of the teen driving laws in Georgia. Had the young people in the recent crashes followed the laws Georgia has on the books, they would be alive today, he said.
"I think we have provided every possible piece of legislation at this point," Wilkinson said. "It's up to the parents now, and up to the teens to take responsibility for their own actions."
That's easier said than done. As any parent of a teen knows, you can lecture all day but you can't make them listen. A lot of teenagers think they've already got it all figured out.
And many parents today are so busy that they move on to other matters after the lecture, said Len Pagano, president of Marietta-based Safe America Foundation, a nonprofit group that runs a program providing driver education to schoolchildren in Georgia.
"Most parents tend to be preoccupied," Pagano said. "They get their kids to the teenage years and think they're on autopilot. But that's when the most serious parenting is needed --- if you want them to reach adulthood."
Pagano's organization gets a rush of calls from concerned parents each time a teen dies in a wreck locally.
"Every tragedy brings a spike of interest for about 72 hours," Pagano said. "People get very motivated. But then they lose it and they go back to their normal, law-of-averages thinking: It's not going to happen to my teen.
"The reason we as a community go from a spasm of grief to a spasm of inactivity is because we haven't conceptualized how to change the behavior," Pagano said. "We have to change how we think and then project that thinking onto our teens."
Teresa Reese, co-president of the PTA at Roswell High School, knows how hard it is to keep many parents involved.
"It's very difficult to do," said Reese, who has three teens of her own. "They're trying to give their children some responsibility and freedom. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it's when you need to be on top of your children the most. Kids need boundaries. It's scary out there."
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for American teenagers, especially males, and teens die in car crashes at a disproportionately high rate in Georgia, year after year. In 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available, Georgia, the 10th most populous state at the time, had the nation's eighth-highest number of 16-year-olds killed in car crashes. Teens also speed more than the general population and wear seat belts less frequently, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
It's a deadly combination, especially when several kids are together in a car. That's why most states, including Georgia since 2001, have changed to a graduated licensing system, which puts more restrictions on beginning drivers, including late-night driving curfews and limits on teens' driving together.
Both of those restrictions were ignored in the crash that killed the two north Fulton 16-year-olds. That's why kids need to learn about all this before they reach the age when they think they know it all, Pagano and Reese said.
"Giving them driver's ed at 15 to 17 is too late," Pagano said. "By the time kids are 15 they're already programmed to make mistakes [and] have in their minds that they don't need any more input."
Reese, the PTA president, thinks parents should start teaching their kids about being responsible drivers and passengers in elementary school, or middle school at the latest.
"That's when their little groups start forming and their hormones are raging," she said.
And it's the responsibility of parents --- not the kids and not the schools and not the police --- Wyatt and others say.
"We have to do it every day, not just when a kid dies," Wyatt said.
She's preparing to mark the anniversary of Emily's death. It will be hard.
"I've torn myself up over what I could have done differently," she said. "Boy, if I had her back. . . . "
Copyright 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
