Inexperience, speeding blamed

as teen road deaths climb to 14

By Marc Lukasiak
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 3, 2002

Three more families grieving over the deaths of teens in car crashes last week join ample company in western Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, two Westmoreland County high school students died when the car in which they were riding collided with a train, and a West View teen was killed when his car hit a utility pole on Camp Horne Road in Ohio Township.

Police and traffic safety experts are at a loss to explain why western Pennsylvania has been plagued since January by a rash of fatal car crashes involving teen-agers, but say inexperience combined with aggressive driving tactics such as speeding are mostly to blame. Thursday's tragedies bring the total to at least 14 teens killed in vehicle accidents since the beginning of the year.

"There's no reason for it," said Philip Morrissey, the comprehensive highway safety coordinator for Allegheny County. "It's like it's an anomaly in the sense that this year, there are more,"

Drew Meyers, 18, and Franklin Kalish, 16, both of Manor, in Westmoreland County, died shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday when the car they were riding in crossed train tracks in Hempfield Township and was stuck by a Norfolk Southern train. The driver and a third passenger were hospitalized. Also Thursday, Shawn Mulligan, 17, of West View, sped away from police on Camp Horne Road around 2:30 a.m. and hit a utility pole. He died at the scene from head and neck injuries, officials said.

His father, Jerry Mulligan, said he's heard news reports about all the other fatal teen crashes this year, but never thought he would be the grieving parent.

"It's always someone else," he said. "When it's you, it's like a nightmare. That's my baby. We'll just try to deal with reality right now."

Dan Ferguson said he knows the pain Mulligan is feeling.

A New Year's Day crash killed Ferguson's son, Joseph Vedilago, 18, and three friends, Adam Protzman, 16; Ryan McCaffrey, 16; and Sarah Steiner, 15. Police said Vedilago's car went out of control and hit another car.

"It's putting their families and friends through a lot of emotional turmoil. The hardest is yet to come," Ferguson said. "It sets in months after the death."

On Friday, Ferguson awarded six memorial scholarships at Slippery Rock High School in his son's name.

Two other Slippery Rock High School students were killed in February when a Ford van with five passengers crashed in Worth Township. Benjamin Bicehouse, 16, and Jason M. Yakima, 16, were killed while the other three passengers were injured.

Statistics show that car crashes are the leading killer of teens — more than 8,000 a year in North America. Official figures for 2001 and the first five months of this year are unavailable, but numbers for Allegheny and the six surrounding counties since 1966 range from a high of 41 deaths in 1998 to a low of 22 in 1996 and 1999.

From a parent's perspective, this year's toll has been "shocking," Ferguson said. "It's becoming overwhelming."

A Ringgold High School junior, Kristin Marie Givens, 16, died May 7 in a two-vehicle crash in Washington County. Police said she may have been speeding.

Less than two weeks earlier, Tylar Andaloro, 18, proposed valedictorian at Laurel Highlands High School, and Carrie Rapano, 17, were killed April 28. Neither was wearing a seatbelt.

On March 15, Elizabeth Forward High School student Lucas Butler, 18, was a passenger in a speeding car that hit a guard rail in Elizabeth Township. Butler died and the driver was seriously injured.

A North Allegheny senior, Melissa Sciullo, died Feb. 27 when her car crashed into a tree in Marshall Township. Police believe Sciullo, the lone occupant, was speeding.

Morrissey, a public health administrator with the Allegheny County Health Department, said the most common reason teen-agers crash is because of a lack of experience. They try to negotiate sharp bends at high speeds, drive too fast or lose control during bad weather.

"They think they're 10-feet tall and bulletproof," said Morrissey, who spoke to Perry Traditional Academy students Thursday about safe driving. "A lot of parents would restrict or rescind driving privileges if they knew how their teens really drove. Some of these kids aren't ready to be drivers."

Pennsylvania's graduated driver's license program — which prohibits 16- and 17-year-olds from driving after 11 p.m. and before 7 a.m. — is an attempt to curb teen-age accidents, said Cathy Tress, a safety press officer for the state Department of Transportation.

"How many crashes and deaths did we prevent?" she said. "We don't know that."

Gary Direnfeld, a social worker in Ontario, Canada, started the I Promise Program in January, asking parents and children to make a pact for "safe and responsible" use of the car. One aspect of the program is a rear-window decal placed in the car with a toll-free phone number. When other drivers see a motorist driving poorly, they can report it; and that way, he said, parents know when their children aren't driving safely. Information about the program is available at www.ipromiseprogram.com

"We've raised these kids for 16 years not to see them die in their sixteenth year of life," he said.

Direnfeld said as a social worker he worked to rehabilitate teen-agers with brain injuries suffered in car crashes.

"I'm only all too familiar with the results of these teen car crashes," he said.

So, too, are the parents of western Pennsylvania.

Marc Lukasiak can be reached at mlukasiak@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7939.

Contact:

Gary Direnfeld, Executive Director
I Promise Program
20 Suter Crescent,
Dundas, Ontario, Canada
L9H 6R5

(905) 628-4847
gary123@sympatico.ca
www.ipromiseprogram.com