Teen Death Toll in Crashes Spirals Up

The silver Toyota Corolla carrying 17-year-old Christian Cruz and three friends on a midnight food run swerved off a slick Montgomery County road and hit an elm tree early yesterday, making him the seventh suburban Maryland teenager to die in a traffic accident in little more than a week. Neither Cruz nor any of his 15-year-old friends in the Corolla was licensed to drive.

Hours after Cruz's death, mourners gathered in La Plata and Fort Washington to eulogize two victims of an earlier wreck. Four students from La Plata High School were killed Nov. 6 when the teenage driver of the car they were in, speeding, overcorrected and spun into the path of a sport-utility vehicle.

The cycle of grief recalls fall 2004, when 15 young people died in the span of a month in Washington area crashes involving teenage drivers. A Maryland law enacted in response to those deaths could have prevented two of the most recent wrecks -- including the one that killed Cruz -- if the teens had obeyed it.

In 2005, Maryland lawmakers expanded a "graduated driver's license" system for the state's newest and youngest drivers. Licensed teenage drivers may not carry passengers younger than 18 who are not immediate family members during their first five months unless an adult is in the car. Teens are also barred from driving between midnight and 5 a.m. and from using a cellphone behind the wheel in their first two years of driving.

Jonathan Chapman was 16, too inexperienced to carry teenage passengers, when he drove four teens home last week from a basketball workout in Charles County. No one in the car was wearing a seat belt. He and three passengers were killed.

The state law is one of several enacted in recent years to protect younger drivers, along with a barrage of education and public-service appeals about the perils of driving while drinking, distracted or talking on a cellphone. As with any attempt to govern the young, the law doesn't work if teen drivers ignore it.

"Teenagers don't understand why this is so important sometimes, and that is so frustrating for those of us trying to protect them," said state Sen. Roy P. Dyson (D-St. Mary's), who sponsored the legislation.

Details of yesterday's crash remained sketchy, the investigation hampered by uncooperative witnesses. Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said it was not clear who was driving, although he expected answers by today.

"You've got four people in the car, all friends from school," he said. "Was being distracted a factor? Is the driver paying attention to driving?"

The boys, together for a Sunday-night sleepover, set out for food sometime past midnight. Cruz did not drive, according to his mother.

"It was raining; the road was wet," said Ana Maria Cruz, speaking in Spanish.

The boys were heading west along Bonifant Road through a wooded area of Wheaton when the driver lost control, skidding across the eastbound lane, off the road and into a tree. A piece of the car's silver body lay behind the bent tree trunk yesterday at the muddy accident site.