Dori: Puyallup crash shows we should not give licenses to 16-year-olds

For those of you who have teenage kids, this every parent’s greatest nightmare. Your kids are out — you’re not quite sure where or with whom — and you hope they make good decisions. Then you get a call in the middle of the night.

If you’ve seen the photos of the Puyallup crash that police had to respond to early Tuesday morning, you know what I’m talking about. Parents got that call in the middle of the night; that their 16-year-old was dead. The three other teens were badly injured.

Here’s what we know about the crash. There were four people in the car and the 16-year-old was driving (if it was within the first six months of the teen getting his license, this was already illegal). Police found an empty bottle of Bacardi rum next to the vehicle. It was going at a very high rate of speed, left the road, and wrapped around a tree. It looks like the driver’s seat received the greatest impact. In the photo, the tree is where the driver would be sitting.

1 dead, 3 injured after violent crash into tree in Puyallup

As I was thinking about the nightmare of this Puyallup crash for these kids and their loved ones, I was reminded of a question I’ve asked many times before, as a former 16-year-old myself — why do we give 16-year-olds driver’s licenses?

I’ve only been involved in one car crash in my lifetime. It was my fault. It was when I was 16. And it was because I was being a moron. I was by myself, trying to go over a hill way over the speed limit so I could get that roller coaster feeling in my stomach. As I crested the hill, there was a car stopped right in front of me to make a left-hand turn. I went sliding into the back of that car. Nobody was hurt, but my car — which I had bought the day before my 16th birthday — was completely smashed.

When my girls got to their high school years, we stressed that they had better not have any passengers in their car until that six-month restriction was lifted. Otherwise, they would not have had a license or car until age 18. But then, you always have to hope and pray that your kids make good decisions not only about their own driving, but about whom they choose to get in a car with.

We hear from everyone in our society that we need to take guns away from 18, 19, and 20-year-olds because their brains are not sufficiently developed. But those same people want to lower the voting age to 16, and give the power of the vote to brains even more insufficiently developed. Why? What is the trade off for society?

It’s just a fact of the matter. The statistics are quite compelling that those are the ages when it’s most dangerous to be on the road. It’s not just because those are the newest, most inexperienced drivers. It’s because 16-year-olds can make horrible decisions. Even the good kids can make life-ending decisions. I know it’s a hassle for mom and dad because it would mean you have to pick up and drop off your kids for an extra couple of years. Of course, we’re never going to raise the driver’s license age to 18.

It’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking when you see yet another story like the Puyallup crash. We continue to put these death machines in the hands of insufficiently-developed minds. And again, I was in that category myself.

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