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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Duty to drive like grown-ups is message lost on many teens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
His teenage son got busted driving 71 in a 45-mph speed zone.
Jack Turner didn’t get a chance to bless him out. “His mom got onto him first,” he said. “Now, my insurance is going to go up.”
Turner puffed on a cigarette as he stood outside the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center in Lawrenceville. He would have preferred riding his Harley on this beautiful fall morning, maybe winding through the North Georgia mountains. But this is how he spent part of Saturday — accompanying Harrison, his 16-year-old son, to a three-hour traffic safety course.
“A lot of kids are in there,” said Turner, motioning to the administration building. “The instructor told some of the kids they’d be out of here at 12 because there’s going to be a big crowd here. Do you know anything about it?”
I told him about the SCLC’s “national march” to protest the use of Taser stun guns. The Atlanta-based civil rights group wants Gwinnett County police and other law enforcement agencies to stop using the devices until further research.
The SCLC thinks it’s lethal. Proponents say the weapon saves the lives of people who could have been justifiably shot by the cops.
The protesters were to march from a local park to the county government complex, then hold a rally. The march started a little late, so with time to kill, I poked my head inside the traffic safety class.
Turner was right. About 100 teens were taking the course. How many took it serious was anyone’s guess. It’s hard to gauge young people — what sticks with them and what passes in one ear and out the other.
One boy dozed. A lot of them giggled at things the instructor said. Two girls high-fived each other after one of them told the class she’d accumulated four points against her driving record.
But there was nothing funny about the video. Bloody lifeless bodies. Cars crushed beyond recognition. Frame after frame of roadside memorials to young people who had tested their mortality and lost.
Pacing back and forth, microphone in hand, Sgt. Bill Blodgett of the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department strove to connect.
He laid out the pitfalls of amassing a bad driving record even if you cheat death. High insurance. Revoked licenses. Parental civil liability.
“Am I saying all this to scare you? Yes I am,” Blodgett said.
The Taser protest rally was under way when the teens poured out of the administration building. Size doesn’t equate to importance, but there’d been more teens in the traffic safety course than at the protest.
Jack Turner and his son made a beeline for the parking lot.
Harrison drives a King Cab pickup. He’s a junior at Brookwood High and works part-time at a local Publix. His speeding ticket cost him $233, plus the $5 he had to pay for the traffic safety class.
“I need to drive slower,” said Harrison, who looks just like his father. “But a lot of the kids in there didn’t even have licenses. I would never drive without my driver’s license.
“That’s just stupid.”
Turner said he told his son over and over not to speed.
“Luckily, he didn’t kill anybody,” dad said.
Amen.
• Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach him at 770-263-3875 or by e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com
