Five teenagers were riding in this Subaru early this morning near Santa Fe. Four were killed. The driver of the other vehicle has been arrested. Charges include four counts of vehicular homicide. Alcohol suspected, of course.
Tragic
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We were coming home from a friend’s house last night on Old Las Vegas Highway when we were passed by about 20 emergency vehicles of all types — enough to make us really worried. We go to the point where the road was blocked before we turned around and went back around to take the interstate. The reality was even worse than we had imagined.
I didn’t know any of the kids, but just about everyone of that age in Santa Fe did. The community is in shock.
I remember reading a few years back that some group was proposing outlawing more than two teens per car.
At the time, I thought, “How ridiculous,” but the more I read (and watch), the less ridiculous it sounds. Pile four of five silly, boisterous kids into a car with an equally silly, boisterous, easily distracted, inexperienced driver, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Even without the early-morning hour or the alcohol.
Just for clarification, there has been no report of the teens drinking.
The other driver is alleged to have been drunk and on the wrong side of the road, offered no aid to his victims, and may have been trying to leave the scene. He has a prior DWI arrest.
If you drink and drive and kill someone we should arrest you, convict you, and hang you at the side of the road where the accident took place and leave your body there to rot.
Virginia has a bunch of special laws for drivers under the age of 18. They can’t have more than one teenage passenger until they have held their license for one year. They can’t drive between midnight and 4am. They can’t use cell phones.
Of course, none of that will help you if a drunken a-hole comes at you on the wrong side of the road.
See, I don’t know that I agree 100%.
I understand the tragedy here. I can barely stand to look at the photo of that car. I also agree that the drunk driver who murdered those kids should be strung up. I agree COMPLETELY that none of us is ready for a drunk bearing down on us in our lane in the middle of the night.
But who do you think has a better shot at evading that drunk? A more experienced driver without a bunch of distractions or a teenage girl who’s had her license for a matter of months and who has her car stuffed full of friends?
Seriously. My heart breaks for those kids and for their families, but what the hell were a bunch of 15 and 16 year olds doing driving to a party in Eldorado at one in the morning???
We can’t legislate tragedies out of existence, I realize, but if one of those laws Jill mentions had kept all those kids off that highway last weekend, it would be five lives saved.
Their familes will never be the same. It’s so very sad.
And perhaps SOMEDAY there will be consequences for those who drink and drive, although I wonder how many innocent people have to end up dead before it happens.
I’d estimate it’s well over 2 million already in the US alone and we haven’t done anything meaningful to stop it yet.
I like the laws Jill mentions and I agree Elise those laws might have reduced or prevented this horrific tragedy. Three points though.
1. Don’t blame the victims.
2. The perps in these cases almost always have prior DUI offenses.
3. The last tragedy of this kind around Santa Fe when five members of one family were killed on I-25, the dad was driving.
According to the New Mexican, the teen driver did have a “provisional” driver’s license.
“Holders of those licenses are barred from driving between midnight and 5 a.m., and from driving with more than one other person under 21 in the car who is not an immediate family member.”
A similar tragedy occurred here 13 years ago except there was no oncoming drunk driver. Four 14 year old kids went for a joy ride in a parent’s car at 2 AM. The child driver lost control on a curve and killed them all. I still get the creeps when I drive on that road.
One I think of often took place when I was visiting in Cheyenne about 12 years ago. A 16-year-old driver lost control on I-80. The accident killed her mother and two siblings and critically injured the dad. How does one survive that emotionally?
We really do let them drive too young.