Safe Driving – Talking To Your Teen About The Danger Of Speeding ~
On Monday, July 15th, Amber, Jay and I were in the living room watching TV. All of a sudden we heard this horrible noise. Seriously, I thought a meteor was getting ready to kill us all. Anyway, I was sitting on the couch in front of the living room window and I looked out just in time to see an airborne car FLIPPING across our yard. The entire front yard.
Safe Driving: Never Leave The Scene Of An Accident
The accident started in our neighbor to the right’s yard and the car flipped through our yard into the next neighbor’s yard. How fast would you think one might have to be driving to do that? The speed limit in our residential neighborhood is 25 miles per hour for safe driving. There were no tell-tale skid marks on the road to indicate anyone had even made an attempt to stop the car at all.
I immediately turned to Amber and Jay and yelled for them to get outside and help and that it was bad. They instantly ran outside as Jay was yelling for me to call 911. As I was calling 911, I heard a bunch of commotion in our foyer. Amber yelled to me that it was a girl she went to school with. They brought her in and grabbed towels. She was bleeding pretty badly from her leg and they were trying to stop the bleeding. The other two people in the car {including the driver} fled the scene and left her there alone.
The 911 operator put me through to a police officer who informed me that someone was on their way to help. We tried several times to call Amber’s classmate’s mom and couldn’t get an answer so we were going to take Amber’s classmate to the hospital ourselves. Right as we were getting ready to leave, rescue workers showed up to help. They sat her in our Jeep and started working on her leg.
Safe Driving: Watch The Speedometer
Anyway, police came and did their job. Amber and the cop went to find her classmate’s mom and they found the driver of the vehicle, as well. The driver told the cop that he was driving about 40 miles per hour. Everyone at the scene agrees that what he said probably wasn’t even close to what he was actually driving.
At any rate, from what we all saw near the scene, it looked as if the driver was going way too fast and came up to the curve 3 or 4 houses from us and tried to make it {instead of braking}. He then hit the neighbor’s yard {to our right} and took out his mailbox and started flipping over his driveway and into our yard. They flipped through our entire yard, missing two Magnolia trees, our Jeep {which was the 2nd car in our driveway}, our mailbox and electrical boxes that are between our house and one of the neighbors’. Fortunately for them, our subdivision does not have light poles as our wires are underground, but I hope they still understand how lucky they are to have missed all of these other things, especially the electrical boxes and the Jeep. They finally came to rest in the neighbor to our left’s yard – after taking out her mailbox, too.
Lucky for us, they did miss most of our personal property, including our mailbox. They did, however, do damage to our yard and the culvert under our driveway. An accident photographer came out and measured 3 or 4 damaged places in our yard, as well as the damage to the neighbors’ properties. One rut in our yard was 15 ft long and 4 ft wide. Wow. How fast would a car have to be going to take out a hunk of yard that big and keep right on going?
Teen Safe Driving Resources
Please talk to your teens about safe driving. Everyone walked away from this accident, but if that car had gone a little different direction, I am not so sure they would have.
Not sure how to talk to your teens about safe driving? The National Safety Council offers tons of ways to break the ice and have this very important conversation.
How Have You Approached Safe Driving With Your Teen?
So scary! My kids are not allowed to get their license until they are 18 and they are not allowed to ride with teen/ inexperienced drivers. One of my daughter’s good friends who is 17 and a very calm and responsible teen just wrecked her new car she had only had for 3 weeks. She was trying to adjust the air conditioning and ended up off the road and into a cow field. It is obvious from her wreck and the one in your neighborhood that these teens do not have enough actual driving experience before they are turned loose with a license. I think that driving school should be mandatory for anyone getting a license and that driving tests should be mandatory for license renewals. Maybe that would help weed out terrible drivers, whether from unreported medical conditions, old age or lousy habits. I feel really strongly about this, because a teen driver tried to race a light, hit me, nearly killed me and left me with permanent pain from my injuries.
My daughter had Driver’s Ed at school but I would definitely want her to have Driver’s school as well. I feel that is more personalized and more hands on. And more experience definitely wouldn’t hurt. I am sorry about your accident – especially the permanent pain. Was the teen hurt? Or anyone else?
The teenager luckily only sprained his thumb. I was the only person in my car at the time. You are lucky your school system has Driver’s Ed, they don’t offer that here.
Wow. A sprained thumb. Sheesh. The ones who cause the accidents almost always seem to be the ones hurt the least.
Oh wow that is so scary!
For real! It was really intense. Definitely the worst accident that I ever witnessed in real life.
Wow, what a reminder to simply be aware of your vehicle and surroundings! I switch from my bfs car to mine, and they do not accelerate or decelerate at all on the same speeds, so I constantly have to check the speedometer and allow extra space between cars and stop walks!
Great point, Jenna. We have an HHR and a Jeep and they both drive totally different from each other. It’s like night and day.
oh my that is so scary to have happen. I agree that teens need to learn better and safer driving speeds.
WOW! I am just blown away by this! So scarey! I hope those teens learned a lesson, but sad that htey had to learn it in such a way. Definitely very important to talk to teens about safe driving. They definitely had to have been going much more than 40 MPH to do that much damage and just keep going. WOW. I have a tired blow up on me on the freeway going 75 MPH, which caused our car to fishtail and flip off the freeway. We were very lucky to walk away with just a few scratches on the kids and a small boken leg for myself. But even still…knowing the damage that car caused, and knowing what happened in our own car accident, I think they had to have been going closer to my speed than 40.
So glad you were all there to help in such a fast manner.
Wow. I am glad that you guys were okay. That have to have been horrifyingly scary. Several people at the scene guessed they were going about 80, but we really have no idea. Either way, I have never heard an accident that loud before in my life. What is really scary is that we are like 20 or 30 houses into our development. When I think about all the kids and pets and people who walk up and down this road that they could have hit, I am so thankful this didn’t turn out worse than it did.
Oh my goodness, how scary. Thank goodness they did not land in your house! I can’t believe they took off and left your daughters friend there. It is amazing what pure panic will do to a person. I would assume they will find them since at least one passenger was left behind. Teen driving is very scary, especially when there is more than one in the car. Illinois has several laws now that limit how many people can be in then car with a new driver.
We really had thought they hit the house. It literally shook it {I guess the noise from the accident?}
I don’t think I want me kids to drive at all, but something tells me when the time comes I’d be forced go with a flow 🙂
WOW, that is powerful. And here I am, scared to drive faster than 40.
Wow..how scary! They’re lucky they didn’t get hurt worse than they did! I hope the driver learned his lesson. THey are not only putting themselves in danger, but their passengers and innocent bystanders too!
Wow!!! What a horrible experience. Really glad everyone is ok. It’s so important to teach our teens safe driving habits.
Oh my word! I can’t believe that they would leave the scene of the accident…especially with their friend being hurt! Thankfully everyone was okay.
Crazy. Just crazy.
I know. I was shocked, too. I have been in an accident or two in my day – never once did I leave the scene of the accident.
I’m glad that the accident wasn’t more serious. Driving is such a scary thing to watch your children and other young people you know start doing. Thanks for the great tips!
Every time my teen daughter would get in a car, or drive my car, I was full of anxiety. Not because I didn’t trust her but because I know anything can happen===>accidents.
Thank you for discussing a very important safety topic.
very important post, traffic security is one of biggest problem of modern society
Not only was the driver fortunate not to have hit power line or a pole, he or she was blessed not to have hit a child playing in the front yard.