To keep their teenage son and daughter and a dozen of their friends off the roads of Northern Virginia tonight after an alcohol-free New Year's Eve, Walter and Nancy Andrews will drive everyone home along sidewalks and paths in the family golf cart.
At the close of a year that will be remembered for a spate of fatal traffic accidents involving teenagers, parents say they have never felt more anxious about where their children will be at midnight, what they will be drinking and how they plan to get home.
Dianne Ables of North Potomac with children Kelly, 17, holding parrot Pippin, Ashley, 13, and Brandon, 18. Ables says she's keeping close track of her children's plans and whereabouts.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"We've just realized, as our children are getting older, that we need to keep them safer," said Nancy Andrews, who lives in the Cascades neighborhood of Sterling. "That big, bad, frightening world is out there and coming into our house."
New Year's Eve ranks just behind graduation and proms among the white-knuckle nights of parental dread. Teenagers are home from school, restless and ready to mobilize at the flick of an instant message. There are few official events geared toward teenagers. Many parents are away, at adult parties or on overnight hotel packages, their liquor cabinets unlocked. Provisional licenses make it a crime for many high school students to be on the roads after midnight.
So parents are choosing to keep their teenagers home. If they're going anywhere, it's to spend the night with someone known and trusted.
Dianne Ables of North Potomac has an 18-year-old son, Brandon, whose band is performing in Georgetown tonight. She has made sure that he will finish up and come home well before midnight. Her 17-year-old daughter, Kelly, is going to a party hosted by friends in the neighborhood. Ables trusts her daughter but called the parents anyway to make sure
"I always call and tell the mom, 'Thanks for inviting her,' and if she says, 'What are you talking about?' then I know," Ables said. "You find out what you need to find out."
Car crashes have killed 18 teenagers in the Washington region in the past 12 weeks, prompting campaigns to restrict teen driving privileges and to expand driver training in high schools. As the holidays approached, talk turned to the more pressing matter of getting to the new year without another death.
Jordan Savitz, a junior at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, went to New York with two dozen other teenagers to discuss the trend with talk-show host Jane Pauley. Inevitably, the topic also came up in his own home.
"With this happening, my mom and I had quite a long discussion about what other kids were doing, what I am doing. Was I doing this? Of course not," Savitz said. "I do think teenagers will be a little more careful now."
Wootton High School, which lost a student to a hit-and-run driver last month, set aside an entire day's instruction Dec. 21 to discuss drinking, driving and drugs.
"We normally just tell them, 'Don't do it,' and expect that that's enough," said Michael J. Doran, Wootton's principal. "We felt that what had happened in the metro area warranted doing something like this."
Some community groups are offering teen-friendly parties. Annapolis and Alexandria, for instance, offer alcohol-free First Night celebrations. Toni Andrews, spokeswoman for the Alexandria affair, said organizers added a talent contest last year to draw teenagers to an event that traditionally catered to young children and their parents.
Isabel Gonzalez, a junior at T.C. Williams High in Alexandria, will be performing at the city's First Night with her band, LIMB, vying for a $300 prize.