Drinking is not the only danger for teens today

May 11, 2008 08:31 pm

— By Melissa Dunson
and Derek Spellman
news@joplinglobe.com
CARL JUNCTION, Mo. — Shelley Ross will spend this Mother’s Day in tears.
It’s the way she has spent the last three of these holidays, reading cards her son David “Nick” Ross gave her before his death in a high-speed car crash in 2004.
“It hurts today like it did then — it will never go away,” Shelley said. “I will hurt for that boy until the day I get to see him again.”
Nick’s bedroom stands unchanged since that wreck. He was 18 years old. His clothes still hang in the closet. His truck still sits in the garage.
Shelley and her husband, Doug Ross, think they did everything they could to protect their son.
But Shelley can’t help but wonder why that wasn’t enough.
Nick was riding with two high school friends to a Carl Junction basketball game in Lebanon the day of the wreck. The driver, Christopher Gibson, 18, was allegedly speeding when he lost control, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. They crossed the median and struck an oncoming car. There was no evidence of drugs or alcohol being involved.
“Many parents are in the situation where their kids are the cause of the wreck, but we don’t know what else we could have done,” Shelley said.
She doesn’t understand why her son, a leader on the football field, was sitting in the backseat and not wearing a seat belt. She doesn’t understand why the teens were speeding.
As significant as alcohol and drugs are in teen deaths, especially car wrecks, they don’t explain away the entire list of area teens who have died in recent years. Sober high school students die, too, often while engaging in activities that seem so obviously dangerous to adults.
According to the case records of the Missouri State Highway Patrol:
*Samantha Dallas, 16, Stella, was window surfing — sitting on the passenger side window and hanging her body out of the car while it was being driven — when the 19-year-old driver missed a turn going 45 miles per hour and hit a ditch on Nov. 27, 2006. Samantha was thrown from the car. She did not survive.
*Michael Blair, 18, saw police lights behind his pickup truck on Nov. 24, 2004, and allegedly took off. In his effort to elude police, he rolled his truck. Passenger Lucas Gabrielson, 16, Galena, Kan. did not survive. Four others were injured.
n A carload of high school-aged Joplin cousins decided to switch drivers while speeding down U.S. Highway 71 on S
* Jared Badders, 19, Nevada, was going 60 miles per hour down Panama Road in Vernon County in the early evening of June 25, 2006. He lost control, flipped the car and hit a tree. Badders did not survive.
* Brooke Hough, 16, Carl Junction, was driving 65 miles per hour down Fountain Road in Joplin, on May 26, 2007. She lost control and wrecked. Hough did not survive.
* Two sets of siblings, Natasha Brown, 16, and Bobbi Brown, 15, and David Stamps, 17, and Bethany Cupples, 13, all of Stella, were driving too fast on wet pavement the afternoon of May 8, 2005. Natasha Brown hydroplaned and hit a van head-on. All four died.
The problem of reckless behavior is so pervasive among teenagers that SADD, originally known as Students Against Drunk Driving, expanded its mission to preventing other reckless behaviors. A decade ago, after requests from SADD students, the group started sponsoring chapters called Students Against Destructive Decisions.
The teen brain
Research by the National Institute of Mental Health and Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard’s McLean Hospital suggests the immature development of parts of teenagers’ brains helps explain some of their risky behaviors.
The research shows that adolescents used the amygdala, the brain center for “gut” reactions, in dealing with the same situations where adults used the frontal lobe, the brain center for “executive functions” such as planning, impulse control and reasoning.
As adolescents reach full mental maturity in their 20s, that decision-making brain activity moves from the amygdala to the frontal lobe, resulting in more reasoned perceptions and improved decision making.
Dr. John Wade, a psychiatrist with Ozark Center in Joplin, said those “gut” reactions can be especially dangerous because of teenagers’ natural “overconfidence bias,” or invincibility complex.
“We believe we are better than we are,” Wade said of the overconfidence bias. “We believe we can do things that we can’t.”
Wade said research suggests a teen’s brain mixed with an overconfidence bias skews the decision-making process.
Taking risks also feeds the pleasure center of the brain, encouraging teens to use the emotional part of the brain, rather than the reasoning part.
“Experience isn’t always enough for teens to not do certain things,” Wade said. “That experience has to overcome that overconfidence bias.”
Mike Hulderman, school resource officer for the Carl Junction Police Department, has worked a lot of teen driving fatalities. All involved bad decisions.
“I just don’t think teenagers know that when you die, you die,” Hulderman said.
Sgt. Van Bennett, school resource officer for the Carthage Police Department, said all he knows to do is constantly remind teenagers of the consequences of bad decisions. He’s a believer in the idea of the immature teen brain and said he just tries to work into his student conversation encouragement to make good decisions.
Every day
With 19-year-old daughter, Jessica, still at home, Shelley Ross said she struggles with how to protect her daughter. She said teenagers took risks when she was growing up, but that the atmosphere today only complicates an already volatile situation. Teenagers have more things to do and less time to do it. They are always in a hurry, Shelley said. And then there are the distractions. When she was a teenager, Shelley said she didn’t have a cell phone, computer or giant speakers in her car.
“Maybe kids have always been speeding, but it used to be girls putting makeup on in the car. Now it’s texting, which is like typing while driving,” she said.
Right after Nick’s fatal accident, Shelley said she became “psycho mom,” and tried to keep a tight rein on Jessica in the hopes of keeping her from a similar fate. But Shelley said she and Doug realized all parents can do is instill their values into their children and treasure every day with them.
“We really do live each and every day, because we don’t know if we have tomorrow,” Shelley said. “Spend time with your kids, know who their friends are, know what they’re doing. Tell them you love them. Spend time with them, kiss them every day.”

Highest rates
In 2005, 3,467 15- to 20-year-old drivers were killed and an additional 281,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes. Persons ages 16-20 years old had the highest fatality and injury rates per 100,000 residents.
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.