Posted on 12/18/2018 7:18:21 AM PST by raccoonradio
To the 18 year old kid I stopped on SR 10,
You’re welcome. I’d like to believe that you were minutes away from creating an unspeakable Christmas tragedy when I stopped you. If not only killing yourself, you were well on your way to killing some innocent person who was minding their own business doing nothing else wrong but being in front of you.
You said you didn’t realize how fast you were going. That’s a lie. You may not realize when you’re doing 45 in a 35 but you are fully aware of every mile per hour at 100. You realize it with every bump you hit. You realize it as you pass cars so fast the wind moves your car. You realize it every time you drift over the line and when you move the wheel the car reacts a lot quicker than you’re used to. You absolutely realized it.
You were scared when I stopped you. You were visibly shaking and breathing hard. Unfortunately, you were scared one minute too late and for the wrong reason. You should have been scared that you were trying to kill yourself. I know you’re invincible. I know that you can’t even fathom your own death.
I can tell you dozens of stories of dead and broken 18 year old bodies that I’ve pulled from cars. Broken bodies that I’ve found in front yards after crashes. Unrecognizable bodies. They thought they were invincible too. They weren’t. They were gone so they missed the part where I had to tell their parents that they were dead. Part of your soul disappears every time you have to tell parents that their kid is dead.
I don’t KNOW your parents, but I know them. I know that when you leave every day they say “Be careful. Drive safe.” Those aren’t just words. That is the very last act of them pleading with you to come home safe. When they get a knock on the door, it’s not “Good afternoon ma’am. Your 18 year old son just had a massive heart attack. It’s “Can we sit down? Your son has been involved in a very serious crash. I’m so sorry. He’s died.” When you leave the house they know that, far and away, the best chance you have of dying that day is in that car. Sometimes you’re the innocent person hit by someone with no regard for anyone else and sometimes you’re the one with no regard for anyone else. Today you were the latter.
You seemed like a really nice kid who made a bad decision. I don’t feel bad about this ticket at all. In fact, I’m proud of it. I hope you’re paying it off for months and with every payment you think about how it wasn’t worth it. I hope you slow down. I hope that when your mom tells you to “drive safe” you make a promise to her, and yourself, that you will. I hope you can envision me sitting in your kitchen telling your screaming mother that you have been killed.
Slow down. Please. You are not invincible. I promise.
Some years ago 5 young men were in a speeding car in Ontario CA and one was on twitter bragging about how fast they were going. “YOLO” (You Only Live Once)
The car crashed, all died. You only die once.
When 21-year-old rap artist Ervin McKinness died in a car accident this fall, his fans were quick to notice one final message from his Twitter account: “Drunk af going 120 drifting corners #F***It YOLO.”
Less than an hour later, the driver of the car ran a red light, lost control and slammed into a wall, according to Ontario, Calif. police. Four passengers were pronounced dead at the scene. A fifth died at the hospital.
“What is YOLO?” was among the top searches in the United States this year, according to Google, but Twitter users certainly know what it is. It stands for You Only Live Once. According to Topsy, a Twitter analytics company, about 36.6 million tweets have included the YOLO acronym since it first appeared in October 2011 — and a good percentage of them involved young people doing something dangerous or risky.
“There’s something about the way the teenage brain functions that may tend to make poor decisions when other people are present,” said child psychologist Dr. Mary Romano, who works at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “Tie that into social media and even when you’re alone, it almost artificially creates the presence of an audience because you sort of assume your actions are on display.”
Over roughly three hours one morning last week, 34 people tweeted about the prior night’s drunken antics with the YOLO acronym, an ABC News search found. A handful of YOLO-ers asked whether it was too early in the day to start drinking. Another 10 woke up that morning and tweeted that they didn’t study for tests they had to take. Their tweets all included YOLO, or, as a Twitter hashtag, #YOLO.
That LEO did a goo0d deed with his open letter-I hope more than one young adult who sees themselves as 10 ft. tall and bullet proof takes it to heart.
Legally speaking, one is an adult at 18-my parents made sure I knew that so I acted accordingly and paid my own bills-including auto insurance. Years later, auto insurance was more expensive-so my husband and I made sure our cub, once she was 18 knew that while she had paid for the car with her money from her job, she was saving a lot of money being on our auto insurance policy-if she got traffic tickets, that would end immediately. The threat worked-she kept a good driving record...
***it’s not “Good afternoon ma’am. Your 18 year old son just had a massive heart attack***
How true. I knew a man who died when he heard his son had been shot in the head playing a stupid game of “shoot the can off the head.”
The summer after the year I graduated high school (1975), a couple of guys from my school who had also graduated were street racing at night somewhere near the school. One or both of them broadsided a car pulling out of a fast food joint, killing the father and daughter who were in the car. What a way to start one’s post high-school life.
Signal 30.
Used to be that films like Blood on the Highway scared the hell out of us for a short while which may have been long enough to keep the stupidity at bay thus avoiding a tragedy.
Culture has changed so much that some kids today have seen enough vile blood, gore, guts and death via movies and games that invincibility is fostered and subconsciously encouraged in youth.
Exactly what prompted my #27 comment.
Excellent.
Locally on Black Friday a 21 year old man going 97 MPH (impairment by alcohol or drugs is suspected but not confirmed) rear ended a small pick up killing 5 people inside when the gas tank exploded.
After seeing way too many young guys exceeding the speed limit while weaving through traffic I was not too surprised by this.
I like reading stories about “The Future Donors of America” I fully favor their charity and support their contributions.
Sunday night, around 10 P.M., near the Houston Hobby airport, a 19-year-old tried to drive himself home from a bar where he used a fake ID to buy alcohol and get drunk.
He drove his pickup onto the wrong side of the road and hit and SUV head on at a high rate of speed, killing the 23-year-old mom in driver’s seat. Her mom and one-year-old daughter were in the vehicle but survived with only minor injuries.
A friend of mine was pumping gas across the street and ran over to help. What the news reports do not tell is that the young woman was decapitated, and someone had to remove her head from her baby’s lap in order to get the baby out of the car seat.
Many young people, especially young men, do not have sense enough to recognize their own mortality. This one survived and just killed someone else, but his life is essentially over when it was just getting started. There is a good chance he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
This was a note to the kid; how do we know there wasn’t an admonition to the parents in a separate form? That said, it’s pretty pathetic if parents have to be told how to raise their kids - that’s the stuff of liberalism.
There was a relatively recent one making the rounds of the internet a number of years ago that showed a beautiful young woman literally scattered in pieces amongst the wreckage of a car. But even this, I fear, isn’t enough in today’s world.
In contrast, a modern bike of the same style is putting down around 200 hp. Those don't need the car's help, and would have passed the cameraman long before the car got there.
“You said you didn’t realize how fast you were going. That’s a lie.”
Depends on the car he was driving. I once got to ride with a friend’s father in his fancy Mercedes and he was driving about 110mph on I-15 going to Las Vegas and I didn’t notice how fast we were going until he slowed down.
It felt like we were putting along at a mere 70mph!
These kids that do this stuff for goofs and posts on YouTube are organ-donors in training. You can't teach those that choose to not be taught.
Ah, one doesn’t have to tell lies to do that. It’s “The law is whatever the governor’s agents say it is” which got us into the open border mess in the first place. “It’s obvious that it’s way too much” is perfectly logically compatible with “I don’t know what actual speed it was.” Calling the latter a lie is just authoritarian lying.
Was it an actual note to the kid? If so, I’d say it was foolish to publish it.
And a Darwin Award in his case.
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