Teen got a speeding ticket

[Anonymous]

Why are you such a lax parent? Why do YOU not care? Your response to this situation is just as troubling as your daughter's incredibly lax response. Of course she loses the car. She should consider herself lucky that she wasn't charged with reckless driving. At that speed, in a neighborhood, she could have easily hit and injured (if not killed) a child. If you're okay with your daughter learning her lesson by eventually injuring or killing someone, then by all means, let her keep the car. But I'm glad your husband has sense enough to want to take it away. If only you had sense enough to listen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Take the car away" say a whole bunch of people who speed every single day of their lives.

Well, I don't have a car so no I don't speed every day of my life. But I still think this teen shouldn't have one either, at least for a while.

Actually I don't. I got a couple of tickets as a teen/young driver. I'm not saying I don't speed, I'm sure I do. However if I speed I won't be shrugging my shoulders when I get a ticket. The vehicle and all associated costs are paid for out of my pocket.

I should learn to type, too! I don't speed every day. Especially not when I have my teen with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Take away the car.
This is why I don't let my 17 year old drive.

Keep her in a bubble forever. Yeah that works out well. Do you still do her laundry and make her lunch?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:17yr old DD got a speeding ticket for going 44mph in a 25mph. She knows she has to pay the ticket(has afterschool babysitting job) but she really doesn't care and doesn't think it's a big deal. I asked why she was in such a hurry and she just shrugged and said "it's not like I was doing 80, I just didn't realize I was going fast." Husband thinks we should take away the car but she will be an adult in August and I feel like she needs to manage these kinds of things on her own.

is she on your insurance, health or car? then she's not an adult in any way that matters for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Take away the car.
This is why I don't let my 17 year old drive.

Keep her in a bubble forever. Yeah that works out well. Do you still do her laundry and make her lunch?

[Anonymous]

speed kills

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:speed kills

This.my dad always told me not to speed in residential neighborhoods. With a 25mph speed limit, I assume it was residential. She could kill a kid who darts in front of her. If there's anywhere you should go SLOWER than the speed limit, it's where there are pedestrians.

She may not care about herself or the car. But how about some little six year old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised that wasn't reckless driving charge. I thought 15 miles over in a 25 automatically was. She got lucky.

Me too, I thought 15 over was reckless.

30 over in DC
20 over in VA, or over 80
no specific threshold in MD

[Anonymous]

And agree with others - need to be some consequences, possibly taking away car. Flippant attitude wouldn't help me forgive it without some penalty.

[Anonymous]

I live on a residential cut through near a high school and the teenage speeders are the worst. They don't have the maturity or perspective to realize that while zooming through at 45 doesn't feel unsafe to them, there are kids around walking to and from school who are most definitely endangered by their recklessness. I understand why they might not be thinking about that - I probably wouldn't have either as a new driver - but as a parent, it's your job to help your teen understand that This Is A Big Deal and there are reasons speed limits are set as they are and they absolutely will lose driving privileges if they flaunt that.

[Anonymous]

Give her some reading. She's not on a good path.

In particular...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:17yr old DD got a speeding ticket for going 44mph in a 25mph. She knows she has to pay the ticket(has afterschool babysitting job) but she really doesn't care and doesn't think it's a big deal. I asked why she was in such a hurry and she just shrugged and said "it's not like I was doing 80, I just didn't realize I was going fast." Husband thinks we should take away the car but she will be an adult in August and I feel like she needs to manage these kinds of things on her own.

At 44 mph, she's almost guaranteed to kill any pedestrian she hits. How would you feel if you left her to manage a few years of prison on her own because you didn't want to be a parent for a few more months? Your husband is absolutely right, and your daughter is headed for trouble if you don't turn that ship around.

CCD wrote:You’re likely to see 40 (or 45) mph speed limits on the outskirts of towns or on 2-4 lane roadways and expressways through large cities (e.g., Lake Shore Drive in Chicago or State Street or Harrison Avenue in Rockford, IL). They’re pretty common, and the odds are good that you can think of an area close to where you live with 40+ mph speed limits that doesn’t require going on the highway. Yet you can also probably think of a number of times when you’ve seen pedestrians attempting to cross such streets, with or without cross-walks. Here’s what would happen, on average, if 20 people were hit at these speeds.

To put it simply, nearly all of them would die at the scene. The death rate jumps to a near-conclusive 95%. That’s 19 out of 20 people, or pretty much everyone. That’s not the injury rate; it’s the death rate. The 20th person would be injured. That’s a 5% survival rate. There are very few diseases with 95% fatality rates (untreated Rabies is the only one most Americans have any real risk of coming across), but those are your odds of dying if you’re hit by a vehicle at speeds you’re likely to find in every city in the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live on a residential cut through near a high school and the teenage speeders are the worst. They don't have the maturity or perspective to realize that while zooming through at 45 doesn't feel unsafe to them, there are kids around walking to and from school who are most definitely endangered by their recklessness. I understand why they might not be thinking about that - I probably wouldn't have either as a new driver - but as a parent, it's your job to help your teen understand that This Is A Big Deal and there are reasons speed limits are set as they are and they absolutely will lose driving privileges if they flaunt that.

I have a relatively new driver. For the first year he was super careful. Once he was confident he was one of the kids you are talking about - took a speeding trip through the neighborhood. I live in a neighborhood where on day one of his speeding adventure, I got messages from many neighbors. My son was remorseful and responsive to a discussion of the risks. Just wanted to say that I am so grateful of those people who messaged me. Who knows what might have happened if I didn't know and hadn't had the opportunity to intervene.

[Anonymous]

OP's daughter's speed was almost double the limit (44 / 25 = 1.76). A correlation would be if she was driving on the Beltway with a speed limit of 55 she would have to be going 96.8 mph to maintain the same rate.

Not to be an alarmist but I wonder if OP's daughter has read the story about the young man on River Road who killed 3 members of a family because he was going something like twice (maybe more?) the speed limit? That young man wasn't speeding because of an emergency or any 'important' reason; he was just speeding because he normally sped when he drove. Unfortunately 3 people died because of his callous disregard for the speed limit and because of his inability/unwillingness to see that his behavior could negatively impact others.

OP, your daughter needs to learn that you don't tolerate this type of bad behavior, especially in a vehicle bought and paid for by you and insured in your name. Your daughter should re-take driving lessons with some group like I Drive Smart (the organization run by cops), she should pay for the ticket out of money she earns (not money coming out of a birthday account) and she needs to pay the insurance premiums on a future basis from money she earns.

[Anonymous]

Fun facts. If OP's daughter were in Norway...

1.) She wouldn't have been able to drive to begin with, keeping her reckless behavior off the road (the limit is 18).

2.) She'd have lost her license automatically for a minimum of 3 months and up to 3 years.

This is one quick example of how permissive our culture is toward reckless driving, speeding, and how statistically, we pay for it in blood.

CCD wrote:In 2014, there were 5.156 million Norwegians and 147 road deaths. In other words, there were 28.5 road fatalities per million Norwegians, or 2.85 road fatalities per 100,000.

In 2013, there were 316.5 million Americans and 32,719 road deaths in 2013. This figures out to 103.4 road fatalities per million Americans, or 10.34 road fatalities per 100,000.

The ratio of US road deaths to Norwegian road deaths last year, then, was 3.6. In other words, you were almost 4 times more likely to die by auto traffic as an American than a Norwegian.

That’s huge.

To put it another way, if our death rate had been as low as Norway’s, even when scaled up to our much larger population, we would only have lost around 9,092 men, women, and children instead of 32,719. Close to 24,000 lives could have been saved.