Why? "So if he left, I could stay," she says.
"We like to be in control of what we do," Montanez explains. She and her friends would rather pick up a guy than be picked up, she says.
"I'll ask the guys, 'Don't you feel inadequate because your girlfriends drive you everywhere? They're like, 'We like it,' " she adds.
Jackie Tayman, left, and Shana Shrader of Clarksville both have had car accidents, though none serious. Nationally female teenagers are crashing cars -- and dying in cars -- at significantly higher rates than a decade ago.
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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Once these girls decide on an adventure, they and any other pals they can muster up drive separately to a designated spot near the Giant supermarket in River Hill Village Shopping Center. They park their wheels amid the soccer-mom Escalades, and whoever has the most gas agrees to chauffeur everybody else.
If more of them sign on than can fit in one car, they'll take a second car. But that doesn't mean they'll necessarily return in two cars. After partying at a Baltimore club recently, Tayman, one of two drivers, couldn't find her car keys. Nine people rode home in Shrader's Corolla -- six in the back seat, three up front.
Stories like Shrader's frighten authorities, who say teen drivers are almost five times as likely to have an accident with passengers in the car than if they are driving alone.
Such a collision occurred one wet morning last week in Bowie as a young woman driving with another teenager steered her Buick sedan around a curve on a slick country road. Traveling faster than she should have given the road condition, according to police, she crossed the double yellow line and plowed into a Pontiac minivan carrying three girls.
The impact pushed the Buick's engine and dashboard into the driver and her passenger, said Capt. Mark Brady, spokesman for Prince George's County fire and emergency medical services. No airbags inflated. Rescue workers spent a half-hour cutting off the top of the Buick and pulling the critically injured driver and passenger out before flying them by helicopter to the hospital.
The minivan's drivers, all wearing seat belts and somewhat protected by airbags, were treated for minor injuries and released.
Safety experts say teens driving with other teens are easily distracted.
"I remember riding with [a friend] while she was shifting gears, smoking, changing the radio and talking on her cell phone and to me, all at the same time," Tayman recalls.
Montanez offers another story: "One of our friends was looking for her lighter and ramped her car over the top of another car." The friend survived, she notes, and is now on her third car.
Gordon Booth, a nationally known driving teacher, calls high school driver's education programs "deplorable," and holds them partly responsible for the crash rates of both sexes. He and others suspect there may be gender-specific driving characteristics that such programs are not addressing.
Are girls more likely than guys to drive with friends? More likely to chat on a cell phone while driving? More likely to make multiple stops when they're out -- a practice the experts call "trip-chaining" -- which increases the risk of having an accident?
