Concern Grows as Teens Die In Crashes

Parents, Officials Talk Seat Belts, Rethink Curfews

A rash of fatal car wrecks involving teenage drivers in suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia is prompting parents to revisit safe driving rules and lawmakers to urge stronger enforcement of laws that might have prevented some of the deaths.

Ten teens have died on the roadways of suburban Maryland and Virginia in the past two weeks. Three more were hospitalized Tuesday when the car in which they were traveling skidded off a road and hit a utility pole on a dark and wooded stretch in Anne Arundel County. And now, many young drivers are home for Thanksgiving, with four days without classes, homework or 10 o'clock curfews.

David and Betsy Devlin-Foltz sat down recently with their teenage son Sebi to remind him about seat belts. It was an obvious point, but one the parents thought was worth making after they read about the recent deaths of young motorists who weren't wearing theirs.

Sebi, a senior at Einstein High in Kensington, responded "with an assenting monosyllabic grunt, which we took as promising," his father said.

All of the crashes involved some combination of risk factors -- unlicensed or inexperienced drivers, challenging road conditions, unsafe speeds or failure to wear safety belts -- that typify traffic fatalities involving the young.

Seat belts are a particular concern to parents and officials. At least seven of the 10 dead teens were not wearing them.

Data from the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, soon to be published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show that fewer than half of District teens reported always wearing seat belts when riding in cars driven by someone else. And 11.5 percent of students said they rarely or never wore seat belts, a slight increase from the last survey, in 2005. No comparable data were available for Maryland or Virginia.

"It's about one in nine kids," said Marc Clark, a D.C. schools official who oversees the survey locally. "And if you think of how often they hear that message . . ."

Seat belts may have been a factor in Tuesday's wreck, which injured the 19-year-old driver, Charles DeLaCruz, of Laurel, and at least one of his two 16-year-old passengers. Their car left the roadway, plunged into the woods and overturned on a stretch of Brock Bridge Road in Maryland City, at the edge of Patuxent Research Refuge. A fire spokesman told the Capital newspaper in Annapolis that some occupants were thrown from the vehicle.

The injured teens were flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore as a precaution, said a police spokesman. One teen, Luly Ramirez of Laurel, remains hospitalized. The other passengers were identified as Crevdonte Coppola of Beltsville and Shelby Donaldson of Montpelier.

The cause of the crash was under investigation, police said.

The teens, friends who met at Laurel High School, "were going to the movies or something," said Charles's older brother Luis DeLaCruz. "My brother told me a deer ran out and he tried not to hit it."