Candlelight vigil at UNLV puts focus on teen driver safety

Kyle Hansen

Lauren Fetto, left, lights her candle at a vigil held outside of the UNLV Student Union in memory of teens who have died in car crashes as part of the National Teen Driver Safety Week.

By Kyle Hansen (contact)

Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Kyle Hansen

Kylee Tangren, left, and Ryan Ritchie hold candles as part of a vigil held outside the UNLV Student Union Saturday in memory of teenagers who have died in car crashes.

About two dozen people gathered outside UNLV’s Student Union on Saturday for a candlelight vigil in memory of teens who have died in car crashes.

The vigil concluded National Teen Driver Safety Week.

Lauren Fetto joined some of her friends at the vigil to remember another friend who recently died in a car crash.

“I don’t think teenagers realize how important it is,” Fetto said. “They are more irresponsible than other drivers.”

Ryan Ritchie, a CSN student who came to the vigil said it is “irresponsibility that causes the crashes. It’s sad how many deaths there are a year.”

Three years ago, Congress declared a week each year to focus on the danger of teen driving, but this is the first time anything has been done in commemoration locally, said UNLV Safe Community Partnership Director Erin Breen, who organized the event.

The partnership has been holding events all week and has been at high schools asking students about their driving habits.

Last year, 24 teens died in car crashes in Nevada, 16 of them in Clark County. While that is fewer than previous years, the trend is on the increase this year, Breen said.

She said the worst thing she has heard in talking to the students this week is that they know there are stricter driving laws for teens, but they don’t follow them and their parents don’t encourage them to.

“We didn’t make the graduated driver laws for fun,” Breen said. “It’s based on studies” that show they saves lives.

Those laws put restrictions on new teen drivers, such as not allowing them to drive with only other young people in the car.

Breen said she talked to only one student who said she was punished by her parents for not following the law. That student said her mother took her license away for six months after catching her driving with friends.

Breen said parents who don’t want to have to shuttle their children around town should talk to a parent who has lost a child in a car crash.

“Those parents would give anything to drive their kids around town for six months,” she said.

The focus of the partnership’s efforts last week was to help parents focus on driver safety and being a good role models.

Early results from a survey of high school students conducted by the partnership show that many students wear their seat belts when they are alone in the car but dont’ when their parents are in the car, because the parents don’t wear their seat belts, Breen said.

“We’ve tried for years and years and years to talk to the kids,” said Nevada Highway Patrol Sgt. Kevin Honea, who was at the vigil with his wife and teenage children. “As parents, we need to start setting a better example.”