Georgia Injury Law Blog
March 21st marked two years since the car accident that killed three Bryan County high school students. Melissa and Heather Arthur and Laura Cobb were killed in an accident just two miles from their school.
On the day of the accident, the three girls were passengers in a Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Tam Duc Le. As the car turned a curve on highway 119, it collided with a pickup truck. Tam Duc Le was charged with felony counts of first degree vehicular homicide and charges of reckless driving and several other traffic violations, including failure to maintain lanes and driving too fast for conditions.
The accident also brought into focus the dangerous highway curve where the accident occurred. Before the accident that killed the three high school students, there had been several other accidents on the curve caused by speeding drivers. At the accident scene, there is still a sign asking motorists to drive at 40 miles per hour. However, families in the area say that motorists frequently drive at far higher speeds.
Teen driving comes with it a number of extraordinary challenges. We think it’s a rite of passage when we hand over car keys to a child, but fail to realize that a vehicle can be a dangerous weapon in his or her hand if it doesn’t come with the right road safety education.
Drunk driving, text messaging or talking on cell phones while driving – these are just a few of the distractions that place teens at great risk for accidents.Across the country, the problem of teen drunk driving has snow balled with binge drinking a major problem at universities. The number of drunk driving accidents involving teenagers has increased, while rates for the general population have decreased. Georgia drunk driving accident lawyers have been actively calling for measures to stem the problem for some time now.
Teenagers are impulsive, over confident and even reckless by nature, and suffer from a feeling of invincibility. Those are normal attributes for their age, but dangerous characteristics in a driver. It falls back not only on law enforcement, but also parents and schools to ensure that teenagers are taught safe and responsible driving behavior, so car accidents involving these drivers are reduced in number.