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Charles Co. Authorities Urge Teens To Drive Safely
Deputies Hand Out Fliers At La Plata High School On First Day Of Class
Sheriff’s deputies were on hand at La Plata High School in Charles County Monday to urge teens to drive safely as the new school year gets under way.
Posted by: Sammy on 08/25 at 05:37 PM
- 1. · Fox 5 news was there this morning and interview Mr. Richmond, too.
Comment by The Quack on 08/25 at 08:13 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 2. · Wow...handing out flyers...what bold leadership.
I am in awe.
Comment by shadowdiver on 08/25 at 08:24 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 3. · what would you have done? Or liked to have seen them do?
Comment by The Quack on 08/25 at 08:28 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 4. · Well for starters how about an actual driver's education program that is taught in the schools?
How about moving the age to get a learner's permit to 18?
How about banning student driving to school?
How about tying driving priviledges to grades? Fail and lose your license.
Add penalites to parents for reckless driving behavior of their kids?
Instead of trying to find real solutions to a real problem, we hand out flyers.
Comment by shadowdiver on 08/25 at 08:52 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 5. · All good points, but which one of those can the Sheriff's Office do?
Well for starters how about an actual driver's education program that is taught in the schools?
CCPS, CCBOE, State Legislature
How about moving the age to get a learner's permit to 18?
State Legislature
How about banning student driving to school?
CCPS, CCBOE, State Legislature, Parents
How about tying driving priviledges to grades? Fail and lose your license.
CCPS, CCBOE, State Legislature, Parents
Add penalites to parents for reckless driving behavior of their kids?
State Legislature
Sounds like if you want to see action of that sort, you need to start writing to your representatives.
As for what the Sheriff can do; I believe this is a first step. Show a presence, distribute information, make sure that all teen drivers know the law and that CCSO is going to be watching them. The next step will be an increased enforcement effort.
Just FYI, during last years legislative session in the General Assembly there were several bills that consisted of several of your suggestions... all of them failed miserably to pass either House. Some other proposals were to make it easier to have driving privileges revoked; to have those privileges revoked or suspended upon issue of a moving violation citation, to make parent/guardian notification of citation for a moving violation mandatory for all teen drivers; to increase the length of time and the restrictions on provisional licenses... Several of these were pursued by our local delegation upon the urging and support of our local law enforcement... As I said, all of them failed miserably to pass either House.
If you want to see real change, your going to need to fight for it too.
Comment by The Quack on 08/25 at 09:02 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 6. · Handing out flyers is not going to change behavior. The teens will probably not read the flyers. The only benefit to this is that the media was ther eand maybe, just maybe some of the parents will hear about htis and read the flyer. These are laws that all ten drivers and their arents are given before they get a license. They either forget them or parents do not pay attention to or know how their teens are driving.
Comment by Notjustme on 08/26 at 09:51 AM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 7. · The answer here is aggressive enforcement of existing laws with a follow-up by a hard-nosed court system. I believe that if a teen has a reasonable notion that he/she will be caught and punished for inappropriate actions behind the wheel, most will adjust their behavior. It seems that in today's world, very few of the habitual offenders even get caught, mush less prosecuted.
My suggestions:
(1) [ACLU members, plug your ears now] Put up roadside cameras/radar to catch speeders. Don't reveal locations. Move them often.
(2) Instead of basing the assignment of school parking spaces on sports or work schedules, as is now done, base it on GPA...period.
(3) One speeding ticket disqualifies a student for a parking permit for 30 days. A second results in revocation of parking permit for the year.
(4) Mandatory sentencing by the courts.
(a) 20+ over the limit - License suspended
(b) >20 mph over the limit - monetary fine
(c) >20 mph over the limit (2nd offense) - License suspended
(d) DUI/DWI under age 21 - License suspended
(e) DUI/DWI under age 21 (2nd offense) - License revoked
This respresents a good start IMHO. We are so easy on our teens now. They feel that they have an absolute right to do whatever they want on the road. Quit babying them and get a little tough. After all, driving is a priviledge not a right!
I realize that these kinds of changes would have to be accomplished through different areas of our government but what are we waiting for? Maybe this year we can beat the record for most teens killed in a single month!
Comment by Birdman on 08/26 at 12:05 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 8. · Personally, I expect that the best way to improve teen driving is that DriveCam program that was advertised earlier in the summer. Apparently when the program was implemented in other states there was a marked improvement within three or four months for almost all the students who participated in it.
There's nothing like feedback to help anyone figure out when they're doing something wrong. After all, professional athletes watch videos of themselves performing to look for improvements, why don't we do the same with driving? Granted, I'm sure many people would have problems with the invasiveness of this.
If anyone is interested, I highly recommend picking up a book called Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. It's surprisingly readable for a book about traffic and driver psychology.
-Cave
Comment by caveman on 08/26 at 12:31 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 9. · Too bad we only have 17 teens from Charles County registered for DriveCam. There are still 83 cameras available.....
Comment by Notjustme on 08/26 at 12:53 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 10. · Hi Quack,
You are right, my thoughts are not police involved. The police are the instrument of public policy not the creators of it.
From the policing perspective however: how about getting them into the classroom. Not once, not just after a tragic accident, but in an ongoing consistent fashion. Hit the classrooms once a quarter.
Make students who lost their license give public presentations to their peer groups when the officers are in the class.
Have police shooting radar and checking seatblet laws outside of the schools every day for the first month and last month of school and consistently in between...with a zero tolerance approach.
I also agree with you that this is something that will have to be fought for. Our politicians are FAR more interested in doing what is expedient and FAR less interested in doing anything that will actually solve problems.
This one isn't my fight...I have other issues that I am more qualified to speak to.
Comment by shadowdiver on 08/26 at 01:28 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 11. · We try to get into the schools at least once a year for traffic safety and can't even get that far. There is just on time for non-school programs. As I told Mr. Grier, "Dead students can't learn". But still nothing will be done on school time.
Comment by Notjustme on 08/26 at 01:37 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 12. · Notjustme:
That must be utterly frustrating. I would wager that if officers were to be able to get into the schools to do small group discussions/presentations fewer kids would be involved in accidents. One thing I do know, it sure as hell wouldn't hurt.
This is the same fuzzy logic I got from Commissioner Graves earlier this year...we have gobs of money for baseball stadiums and failing hockey rinks...but driver's ed in the schools? "Too expensive".
Unbelievable.
Comment by shadowdiver on 08/26 at 06:39 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main] - 13. · Notjustme,
It's a shame not that many people took advantage of it. I have one coworker who signed is son up, and he's enthusiastic about it. Like all learning tools, you have to be engaged enough to use it for it to be at all effective.
From my own experience, I was a terrible driver until I got my first 100,000 miles under my belt, and the two most effective learning experiences I had while driving is when I totaled my parents car while driving tired, and when I got road hypnosis and nearly drove the car off the interstate and into someone braking on the off ramp. Lucky for me, my dad was in the passenger seat,grabbed the wheel, and brought me back into focus.
-Cave
Comment by caveman on 08/26 at 09:14 PM | [Back to Top] | [Back to Main]
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