My Story About Teen Driving

Hello my name is Donna Weeks, thank you for let­ting me share my story with you today and hope­fully this infor­ma­tion will help you and your fam­ily and friends.

On Decem­ber 21, 2006 I lost my incred­i­ble daugh­ter, Kyleigh Lau­ren D’Alessio, who was killed in a hor­ri­ble pre­ventable car acci­dent. The newly 17 year old dri­ver also died in the acci­dent. He just received his Grad­u­ate Dri­vers Licenses and had mul­ti­ple pas­sen­gers in the car. I didn’t know much at that time about the Grad­u­ate Dri­vers License/Provisional Dri­vers License because Kyleigh was only 16 years old and was my old­est child.

After the acci­dent I looked up the GDL and other web­sites for teen dri­vers. With the infor­ma­tion I was find­ing I thought. “Why isn’t this cru­cial infor­ma­tion given to par­ents about the laws of the GDL?” When their teen receives their per­mit and pro­vi­sional license.

After Kyleigh’s acci­dent, there were fatal car acci­dents every week for the next 5 weeks. We lost 11 teens at that time all GDL dri­vers with mul­ti­ple pas­sen­gers. I thought, “Why aren’t these cars marked?” “Why isn’t infor­ma­tion given to par­ents about the Grad­u­ated Driver’s License Laws (GDL)?” With the infor­ma­tion I found on teen dri­vers I could no longer do noth­ing. We are los­ing to many pre­cious lives because of cru­cial infor­ma­tion not pro­vide and the GDL not enforceable.

Teen Dri­ving Awareness

• The #1 Killer of teens – car crashes — nationwide

• The num­ber of teens that are killed in car acci­dents should no longer be accepted.

• The biggest threat to teens is parked just out­side your home.

• Pre­ventable car acci­dents caused by teen dri­vers are the lead­ing cause of death for teens in Amer­ica today.

The Tragic Facts

• Nearly 5,000 teenagers die in car crashes every year.

• Another 300,000 plus are injured in car crashes each year.

• Our chil­dren are irre­place­able and if we could share some extremely impor­tant infor­ma­tion for par­ents and teens to help them make bet­ter choices, believe me its worth every second

Aware­ness — Think Smart

• Mak­ing Teens More Aware of the Dan­gers of Teen Driving

• You have the power to pro­tect you and your friend’s lives.

• If you were aware that one deci­sion that you made while dri­ving could increase the like­li­hood that you could get into a crash, wouldn’t you make the choice to pre­vent it? Be aware! Save your life and the peo­ple you love.

• These sta­tis­tics should be unac­cept­able to you as teenagers because most of these acci­dents are preventable:

• Tex­ting on a cell phone will raise your chances by 88%.
• Talk­ing on a cell phone will raise your chances by 79%.
• Being tired will raise your chances by 59%.
• Dri­ving in bad weather will raise your chances by 55%.
• Hav­ing just ONE FRIEND in the car will raise your chances by 50% — with 3 or more the risk is nearly 4 times greater.

Research has shown that the first 6 months of a newly GDL/provisional dri­ver is the most dan­ger­ous, and being a pas­sen­ger is also dan­ger­ous, and some­times fatal.

I am sure that most par­ents are unaware of the fact that research shows that 3 out of 4 teens state that their par­ents have the biggest influ­ence on their driving.

Know­ing the laws (and sta­tis­tic) in your state for newly teen dri­vers is empow­er­ing. As a par­ent that was not pro­vided with this nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion, at the most crit­i­cal time of my daughter’s life, I feel is extremely impor­tant for pro­vid­ing par­ents with the under­stand­ing and knowl­edge of many sta­tis­tics of the dan­gers of teen driving.

A sim­ple ques­tion like, “can I ride to school with Johnny this morn­ing”, Johnny being the 17 year old neigh­bor who has just received his GDL/Provisional license last week. With­out the par­ents receiv­ing the infor­ma­tion this sim­ple ques­tion has turned into a life threat­en­ing one and could pos­si­bly be the last deci­sion this par­ent may make for their child.

It is time we start to make a dif­fer­ence, know­ing now after so much recent research that a high per­cent­age of these acci­dents are preventable.

I hope this gen­er­a­tion of teen dri­vers as they are edu­cated and are more aware of the dan­ger­ous against them – is the gen­er­a­tion that will accept these changes for them­selves and their friends and start the turn­ing point of sta­tis­tics against them.

I know what it feels like to loss an incred­i­ble child and I don’t want another fam­ily to have to live though the pain that my fam­ily and friends will for the rest of our lives.

Kyleigh’s incred­i­ble spirit and energy for life and love for life is what gave us strength. If I only had to use one word to describe her, the word would be JOY just pure JOY. We miss every­thing about her.

Web­sites I found that were informational:

• ProtectTeenDrivers.com
• UGotBrains.com
• TeensDriversSource.com
• NationalSafetyCouncil.org