Six years after a pickup slammed head-on into Lizzie Nimmich's car and nearly killed her, the 20-year-old stood before an audience on Capitol Hill yesterday and warned young people that they need to be accountable for their own safety.
"It's time for us to step up," said Nimmich, who spent two months in 1998 recovering in a hospital. "It's not just our parents and society who need to look out for us."
Todd Waymon, right, with moderator Jerry Phillips, said responsibility "has to be . . . transferred from parent to child."
(Gerald Martineau -- 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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Nimmich and her older sister Becky, who was driving the car that rainy afternoon, nearly died in the crash on Route 216 in Howard County, which Nimmich attributed to Becky's inexperience behind the wheel. Doctors were amazed the sisters, from Ellicott City, survived.
Nimmich participated yesterday in an early-morning radio broadcast of a town hall meeting about the growing number of fatal traffic accidents involving teenagers. In the past 10 weeks, 17 young people have died in Washington area crashes.
John B. Townsend, public and government relations manager with AAA, said more crashes are caused by distracted drivers and inexperience on the road than drinking while driving. He did not have an explanation for the recent jump in fatalities.
"It's almost like a dark cloud is hanging over the Washington area," Townsend said. "This is a problem of tragic proportion."
He said one thing that might help is limiting the number of passengers in cars driven by teenagers, which Virginia and the District do. The Maryland General Assembly is likely to consider similar legislation this winter.
"When you have four people in a car, you have a party," Townsend said.
Another approach could be to prohibit teenage drivers from talking on cell phones, panel members at the town hall meeting said.
The meeting focused on how to make young people understand the gravity of getting behind the wheel. Montgomery County Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg) said the feelings of freedom and fun for new drivers can overshadow the dangers.
"Driving is the most dangerous thing we do on a daily basis," Andrews said. "We need to act like it."
Nimmich, a junior nursing student at Towson University, said adults often misjudge teenagers. Rather than not knowing right from wrong, teens sometimes push boundaries, she said.
"We know what a good decision is and what a bad decision is," Nimmich said. "We just don't always make the right choice. Parents need to reinforce the good choices. We know it's wrong to speed."
About 6,000 people ages 15 to 22 were killed on the road nationwide last year, and 300,000 were injured, according to AAA.
