Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
Group Lobbies for Stricter Teenager Driving Regulations
Aired June 20, 2001 - 07:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A closer look now at our top story. The numbers are clear when you take a look at them: Traffic accidents kill twice as many teenagers as drug abuse. They are the leading cause of death among 15- to 20-year-olds, yet only one in five people surveyed by the AAA identified car accidents as the greatest threat to teens.
This morning, the AAA is driving that point home. Consider Jennifer Reeves' loss. Her 18-month-old daughter Hannah was killed when a teen driver plowed into her car. Susan Pikrallidas also joins us from AAA. Good morning, Susan; good morning, Jennifer.
JENNIFER REEVES, DAUGHTER KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT: Good morning.
SUSAN PIKRALLIDAS, AAA: Good morning.
LIN: Jennifer, let me start with you. What exactly is the cause? I don't want to make any assumptions about what teenagers do cars.
REEVES: The cause to encourage teenage drivers and the states that they live in to enforce stricter laws that would limit their driving right off at 16 years of age. They would go through a little bit stricter training and practice time before given full license.
LIN: Susan, I meant, what causes these accidents? Why is that teenagers are involved in so many traffic accidents, especially fatal ones.
PIKRALLIDAS: It's a combination of factors, but most important is that teens are inexperienced drivers. They haven't had a lot of chance to learn about the things that you and I know as adults that can present risks on the road. So, they have inexperience. They're also somewhat immature and they tend toward reckless behaviors. And those two factors, combined with others, present the most problems that teens have in driving.
LIN: Jennifer, I know you know firsthand what this story really means to a parent. Before I ask you what happened to your daughter, Hannah, I want to share some videotape that we have of her, a beautiful little girl. Can you describe the circumstances of this tape and a little bit about Hanna?
REEVES: Sure.
LIN: Let me roll the tape for you.
REEVES: Thanks. This is Hannah right at Christmas-time, just a few days prior to the wreck. This is her second Christmas.
LIN: AN adorable little girl.
REEVES: Thank you.
LIN: So, a few days later, what happened exactly?
REEVES: I was driving home from the grocery store with my kids, and I was waiting as intersection to turn left, and as I was waiting for the traffic to pass, a 16-year-old driver driving a truck plowed into the back of my car. This driver never hit the breaks, she never swerved, she never made any attempt whatsoever to avoid the accident.
We hope that this instantly took our daughter. We hope there wasn't any suffering, but our other daughter, who was also in the back seat, was fine. But the 16-year-old made no effort at all to try to avoid the accident, made no effort to help after the accident. Just all around immaturity and lack of responsibility for the accident that was caused.
LIN: Was the 16-year-old charged?
No. No, she was not charged.
LIN: She was not.
Now, this become a personal cause for you. You actually lobbied for new legislation to limit the behavior of teenagers in car, what they can do, when they can drive. What happened with that legislation?
REEVES: In Texas, it's gone through the legislation several times, and finally with enough push and enough support, we were able to pass a law this year that Governor Perry just signed last Friday. It will limit the amount of time they can spend behind the wheel. From 12:00 in the evening until 5:00 in the morning, they're not allowed to drive for the first six months and it also has a passenger restriction that states they can only have one passenger under the age of 21 in the car with them for the first six months.
So, in this particular case with mine, that limit -- that restriction would have limited the number of passengers she carrying, which she had three other teens in the car. So that would have eliminated this wreck altogether.
LIN: Susan, I know it's not an easy task always to convince state legislatures to pass these laws. What is the opposition?
PIKRALLIDAS: Actually, we have 46 states that have enacted graduated driver licensing over the past four years, so we've overcome a lot of the hurdles. But some of the hurdles were parents thought that the state shouldn't interfere with how they teach teens to drive. Some of the hurdles were parents who found that some of the requirements of parental parental requirement very time consuming.
Some of the rural states had some problems with teens who needed to do farm work in the rural areas. I think in Texas there were some concerns about teens and football games and things like that where they needed to convey themselves to school activities, and what we did was try to work with each state individually, working with people like Jennifer and other allies. AAA tried to accommodate some of these requests, but still making the point that regardless of the needs of parents and teens, the most important thing was to get teenagers trained and experienced before they got full driving privileges. And I must say, the 46 states we've been quite successful.
LIN: Do you get any opposition from law enforcement, though; a lot of cops who don't want to be pulling over kids as part of their daily routine, counting the number of passengers, checking the clock?
PIKRALLIDAS: No, I don't think so because law enforcement has been very supportive because they see the carnage that is caused when there are teen crashes. So, they've within very, very supportive in this effort.
LIN: Jennifer, what are you going to teach as a parent now about driving when your child becomes a teenager?
REEVES: I think I will probably be different than most parents from our experiences, but I would like to see that our daughter has a lot of practice behind the wheel with us in the car, more than the state requires. Most of the parents should do that anyways. And I'm sure she'll understand where my husband and I are coming from when we act this way as she becomes a driving teenager. But hopefully, in our state, when she becomes a driver, the law will be even stricter then.
LIN: Well, Jennifer, I'm sure your story touches many people and certainly gets a lot of us thinking about what should happen on the road. Thanks so much for sharing your story; Susan, thanks for joining us from AAA.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
