Julie again here. I just went back and read through your posts. My boys are raised now (23 and 26) but I still worry about them a lot. With Julie it's been different, though. I know she's more vulnerable, and I've tried to be a stickler about friends and cars. She's not supposed to ride in a car with more than one friend. She herself doesn't even have a driver's license yet (she's had a permit for more than a year, but we don't think she's ready yet) and we would never even consider letting her have a car until she goes to college. But almost every one of her friends have cars. And almost every one of them has been in an accident. Just last year, two of the girls who were in yesterday's accident had an accident; one of the girls had a ruptured spleen from it. ARGH!
For teenagers, owning a car is a status symbol. The girls told me today that kids who don't drive and have their own cars are looked down on. The street where the accident happens is on one side of the high school Julie attends, and there are accidents on that street every single day. I just cannot understand why 16-year-old kids need their own cars. When I was a teenager, we had ONE family vehicle and I rarely got to drive it. Even as an adult in my 30s, when I moved to this town to go to college, I rode my bicycle everywhere or took the bus. You don't need a car in this small city. Every street has a bike lane.
OK. I'm done spouting now. :-) I think Julie will now understand why I tried to make so many rules about cars and that I was just trying to protect her. Unfortunately, when you're young, you often have to learn these lessons the hard way.
To all of you whose children haven't reached driving age yet, DON'T let them have their own cars.
