The many factors in the crash that killed 16-year-old Lauren Sausville on Dec. 3 came together in a split second, on a curve that would claim her life.
Hurrying to catch up to a friend on Colchester Road in Fairfax County that night, police say, her vehicle's excessive speed, the darkness, the beer she'd had, her inexperience as a driver increased the odds of a crash. And then there was the 1999 Ford Explorer she drove, a sport-utility vehicle that her stepmother, Debbie Sausville, called "too much car" for a 5-foot-4 high school junior who weighed barely 100 pounds.
Debbie Sausville, right, Lauren Sausville's stepmother, says the Explorer was "too much car" for the teenager. At left is Lauren's father, Pete, and stepsister Shannon Casey. Speed, beer and inexperience were called factors in the crash.
(Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
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Accident Victims: The number of young people killed in traffic accidents has surged in recent weeks.
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Missing the curve, Sausville rode up the embankment on the right. At that moment, crash investigators say, an experienced driver might still have maintained control. But Sausville had had her license only three weeks. She swerved, and the SUV flipped onto the driver's side and slid, in a hail of sparks, into her friend's waiting car.
The friend escaped with minor injuries. Sausville, pushed by her vehicle's crumpling roof into the back seat, died instantly.
"You make a hard steering input, and that's what SUVs do," said Sgt. Pat Wimberly, who heads the Fairfax County police crash reconstruction unit. "They require an extra level of experience and maturity to operate."
Sausville, like most new drivers, "didn't have that," he said.
Forty-nine people ages 15 to 20 died in SUV and pickup truck accidents in Maryland, Virginia and the District last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The problem, researchers say, is that SUVs have a higher center of gravity and are harder to control in an emergency, which makes inexperienced teenage drivers more vulnerable.
Recent safety improvements to SUVs, a federal study found, are less likely to protect teenage drivers; like Sausville, they often drive older-model SUVs.
"Because there's a good likelihood that a teen driver could be involved in a crash, parents would be well advised to select a vehicle that has the best safety record," said Rae Tyson, spokesman for the traffic safety group, which did the study.
Vehicles with poor rollover ratings, he said, "do not fall into that category."
Eron Shosteck of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade association of nine car and light-truck manufacturers that represents the industry on safety issues, stressed that "the industry has always said that all drivers must realize SUVs handle differently than passenger cars. There is extensive information in all SUV owner's manuals about the need to drive these vehicles in different ways."
Teen SUV crashes, he said, "go back to driver behavior. That's playing a very big role."
Rollovers accounted for 3 percent of U.S. crashes in 2002 but nearly 33 percent of driving deaths, according to the traffic safety administration.
On Oct. 17, Laura Lynam, 17, was headed to a high school crew meet in Occoquan, a passenger in a 2002 Cadillac Escalade. The vehicle's driver, a 17-year-old, swerved while she tried to change lanes. Police said the vehicle, carrying seven teenagers, rolled several times and landed on its passenger side.
